LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 
.<^:^ 

Chap.'X5- Copyright No. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



My 

Favorite Lectures 

of Long Ago 
For Friends who Remember 



KATE SANBORN 



BOSTON 

1898 






r 



u«.i4 



Coi'YRIGHT 

By Kate Sanborn 

Ali 7-ii;-hts reserved 

June 6, 1898 




TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 



TH£fiA8E. U)CKW&OD t BR*1N*BCC0., 
HARTFORD, CONN. 



1396. 



ACROSS THE YEARS 



Sitting- on my southern piazza, this perfect after- 
noon in the perfect month of June, looking out over 
" Breezy Meadows," with their rich growth of grass, 
fields of waving grain, and ripening crops, while my 
cows graze in the distant pasture ; listening to the 
raucous yet not unpleasant voices of the conceited 
turkey-gobbler and his meek, drab-hued mates, the 
geese, always perfectly at home on my farm, the 
mournful " koquet, koquet " of the imprisoned 
guineas, and the cheerful cackle of the business 
hen, I realize that my happiest hours are now those 
devoted to outdoor sports and agricultural enter- 
prises — no longer a blue-stocking, but a full-fledged 
farmer ! 

Emerson says that " a farm is a mute gospel." 
To me it has rather proved to be a revelation, noisy, 
expensive, and at times depressing or exasperating. 
Still, I love this life and shall never give it up. 

Looking back to the time when, intensely ambi- 
tious, and audacious because so ambitious, so ignor- 
ant of the world, and so empty as to purse, I dared to 
announce a course of ten lectures on literary themes 
in New York city, a young woman, almost unknown. 



4 Across The Years 

I am amazed at the venture, and bless, as I have 
always done, the patrons who, believing in me, gave 
such effective aid. Do you recall my painful timid- 
ity, my face, which turned all colors from excite- 
ment, and how every bit of that nervous fear 
vanished under the radiant inspiration of the en- 
couraging faces before me ? Dear happy hours ! 
Dear faces ! Dear faithful friends ! 

How far away it all seems ! Since then I have 
talked to thousands, have enjoyed the honors of 
somewhat successful authorship, have been professor 
of literature in a woman's college, president of a 
woman's club, have learned to make butter, and 
manage hens. But nothing stays so agreeably in 
my memory as that first audience of New York 
women. How public opinion changes as time rolls 
on ! Twenty-five years ago there were plenty of 
persons who considered me an oddity on account 
of my profession ; some would not care to know 
a woman who unsexed herself by speaking on a 
platform. I was an unconscious pioneer : now the 
number of women doing the same work is legion. 
I started a class in Dr. Holland's parlor on Park 
Avenue for his wife and a score of friends, condens- 
ing new books and speaking of current events ; now 
every village has such a class, or else a thriving club 
able to do its work without a guide. 

Egotism (on paper) is sometimes allowable. I 
confess without any apology that, like Montaigne, I 
have always "hungered to make myself known," 



Across The Years 5 

have desired earnestly to be known especially, as 
a thorough, well-equipped student of literature. 

And now I am not willing to let these pet 
lectures grow yellow in a desk, or, after my death, 
be stored in an attic as food for mice, or, later, given 
to the flames. I am not so exacting as to expect you 
to read them : just give the book an honorable place 
in your libraries — perhaps some grandchildren of 
yours may look them over. They represent a deal 
of " digging," careful condensing and elimination, 
and are still worth preserving. 

The kindest of publishers fight shy of lectures ; 
all want something light and amusing from me — 
farm bulletins and comic adventures. That is only 
a small part of my life, so I offer some serious work 
made easy reading by hard labor, to those who still 
retain a kindly interest in 




Farmer, Hcinvoman, and ex-Litterateur. 



CONTENTS 



Spinster Authors of England, , 
Bachelor Authors in Types, 

Lady Morgan, 

Christopher North and his Friends, 
The Old Miracle Plays, 
Our Early Ne\vspaper Wits, 

Madame de Genlis 

Are Women Witty ? . . . 



Page 
9 

6i 

1 08 

141 

174 
217 
267 
309 



MY FAVORITE LECTURES 



SPINSTER AUTHORS OF ENGLAND 



Old Maids have been classified, by one who has 
written a book about them, as Voluntary, Involun- 
tary, Inexplicable, and — Literary. These various 
modifications are honored with a chapter of com- 
ment ; each type is clearly defined — except the Lit- 
erary Spinster ; she is left severely alone. Possibly, 
the terms were thought synonymous, for in the 
hearts of many there is still an innate shrinking 
from a Blue Stocking, a name first applied to a man, 
the agreeable Dr. Stillingfleet, whose blue stockings 
were often noticed at Mrs. Montagu's Receptions. 

Jeffrey hit the happy medium when speaking of 
a literary woman: " I don't care how blue her stock- 
ings are, if her petticoats are long enough to hide 
her hose." 

An engraving in an English Annual, entitled 
" The Husband of a Blue," illustrates the once pop- 
ular theory that a woman who writes must of neces- 
sity be a failure in home-life. The luckless man, in 
extremely simple toilette, is walking the floor ; a 
screaming baby in his arms, a pendulum between 
patience and despair ; while Madam, all unconscious 
of the situation, unless, perhaps, annoyed by the 
cries of one and the heartfelt groans of the other, 
is perched up in bed with tangled locks flowing 



10 Spinster Authors of England 

and eyes wildly rolling, as she rounds some fine 
sentence, or, with gaze uplifted, is waiting for fur- 
ther inspiration. 

Both in England and our own country there are 
many distinguished authors who are also good wives 
and mothers, women, in happy homes, with hus- 
bands proud and fond, sure of three good meals 
each day, and every button on. 

But Literary Spinsters are to be enumerat'ed in 
this paper ; scarcely more, for there are so many to 
be mentioned that I can merely evoke, and dismiss, 
like the showman of a panorama. 

I must go back to the Fourteenth Century for 
my first Spinster Author, to the pretty Prioress and 
practical sportswoman — Juliana Berners, a Minerva 
in her studies, a Diana in her diversions, the high- 
born beauty, once famous, now forgotten, cotempo- 
rary with Chaucer. Her works, printed in black 
letter, and adorned with extraordinary wood-cuts, 
have lately been reproduced in luxurious binding. 
Her treatise on the Art of Fishing is the best known. 
She is the author of the " Book of St. Albans," which 
contains essays on Hawking, Hunting, Coat-Armor, 
Fishing, and Bearing of Arms — printed at West- 
minster by Wynkyn de Worde, a rival of Caxton, 
in i486.* She was practical as well as learned and 

* Berners (Dame Juliana). A Treatyse of Fysshinge wyth an Angle. 
A facsimile reproduction of the first book on the subject of fishing, 
printed in England by Wynkyn de Worde at Westminster in 1496. 
With an introduction by Rev. M. G. Watkins, M.A. 4to, printed on 
hand made paper, rough edges, blind tooled, vellum boards. London, 
E. Stock, n. d. (1880). $4.50. 



Spinster Authors of England 11 

enjoyed the chase as does the empress of Austria 
to-day. It is paradoxical to imagine a holy Prioress, 
accustomed to severe restriction and serene medita- 
tions, chasing- over the woodlands with hound and 
horn, or collecting recipes for the extinction of 
vermin on her pet hawks, which she cared for with 
untiring devotion. We owe to her the earliest Eng- 
lish treatise on fishing. 

Her picture, as seen in Zouch's Life of Walton, 
shows a striking face, full of decision, spirit, and 
sweetness, a handsome figure, attractive in spite of 
her ugly gear. On her right is seen the landing net, 
with fish and creel, on the left, emblems of the chase, 
and a hooded falcon at top. 

Good-bye, pretty and pious Juliana of so long ago. 
I would like to linger with you — but a brilliant crowd 
is beckoning, led by Queen Elizabeth herself. 
"Queen Bess " (1553-1603) was an accomplished lin- 
euist, translated from Greek and Latin and occasion- 
ally " dropped into poetry." 

A sonnet on Mary, Queen of Scots, is preserved, 
also some verses on her own feelings, at the depart- 
ure of a rejected lover. 

You recall her couplet, added to Raleigh's, on a 
window of her palace. He scratched : 



" I fain would climb, 
But that I fear to fall." 



She rejoined 



" If thy heart fails thee 
Do not climb at all.'' 



12 Spinster Authors of England 

A bit of impromptu doggerel is ascribed to her 
on entering a certain town, where the mayor, a pom- 
pous, rotund little personage, mounted on a stool, to 
make his address of welcome more impressive. 

Her reply was brief and curt : 

" You great fool, 
Get off that stool ! " 

Disraeli speaks of a manuscript volume of her 
poems still to be seen in the Hatfield collection. 

She was ambitious to shine as a poet, although 
affecting to be angry when one of the ladies of her 
bedchamber copied some rhymes from her tablet, 
" fearing her' people should imagine she was busied 
in such toys." 

Her courtiers lavished extravagant praise on her 
royal ditties, which any editor of to-day would con- 
sign to the waste basket, and the Latin poem of her 
cousin will live, while the verses of Elizabeth Re- 
o^ina are forgfotten. 

We are more interested in another Elizabeth, the 
celebrated classical scholar, Miss Carter (171 7-1806), 
in the words of Allibone, " an ornament to her sex and 
an honor to her race." Of her translation of Epicte- 
tus, which brought her ;^ 1,000, Dr. Warton said "It 
excels the original." 

Dr. Johnson, her friend and admirer for nearly 
half a century, composed a Greek epigram in her 
honor. He remarked of a fine Greek scholar : " Sir, 
he is the best Greek scholar in England, — except 
Elizabeth Carter." 



Spinster Authors of England 13 

Upon hearing- a lady commended for her learn- 
ing, he said, " A man is in general better pleased 
when he has a good dinner upon his table than when 
his wife talks Greek. My old friend, Miss Carter, 
could make a pudding as well as translate Epictetus, 
and work a handkerchief as well as compose a 
poem." 

William Hayley, Cowper's biographer, wrote sev- 
eral volumes on " Old Maids, Ancient and Modern," 
and dedicated the work to Mrs. Carter,* saying : 

" Permit me to pay my devotions to you, as the 
ancients did to their three-fold Diana, and to rever- 
ence you in three distinct characters as a poet, as a 
philosopher, and as an old maid." 

Miss Carter was a first-rate housekeeper and nee- 
dle-woman, took lessons in drawing and music, was 
an excellent dancer, could play cards, or share in any 
social diversion when young, even somewhat of a 
romp. She jots in her diary, " I walked three miles 
yesterday in a wind that I thought would have blown 
me out of this planet, and afterwards danced nine 
hours, and then walked back again. No girl pedant 
was she, and they said she had many opportunities 
of marriage. 

Miss Elizabeth Carter once went to a puppet show 
at Deal with some five friends. Punch was uncom- 
monly dull and serious, though usually more jocose 
than delicate. " Why, Punch," says the showman, 
"what makes you so stupid?" "I can't talk my 

* English spinsters, after arriving at the mature age of fift}', were 
addressed as Mrs., not Miss. 



14 Spinster Authors of England 

own talk," answers Punch, " because the famous Miss 
Carter is here ! " 

Next in order Miss Catherine Talbot (i 720-1 777), 
a most worthy spinster, who can only be mentioned, 
for several pages must be given to Hannah More 
(1745- 1 83 2), whose talent for writing showed itself 
early. When but a little child, if she could get hold 
of a sheet of paper, she would scribble some essay or 
poem, never omitting a moral, and then hide it in a 
dark closet with the brooms and duster. When sh^^ 
composed verses at night, her admiring sister would 
often steal down stairs for a light and then jot them 
down. 

One of her favorite games was a prophecy, for her 
mother proudly relates how she used to make a car- 
riage of a chair and invite her sisters to ride with her 
to London to see bishops and booksellers Her high- 
est ambition was a whole quire of paper, all her own, 
and when the prize was obtained she covered sheet 
after sheet Avith letters to depraved characters to re- 
claim and reform them, and the replies, expressive 
of contrition and resolutions of amendment. She 
was as brilliant as good. When Sheridan, the elder, 
delivered his lectures on eloquence in Bristol, she 
sent some verses to the orator, which led to a pleas- 
ant acquaintance. As a talker she was remarkable, 
When about sixteen, a dangerous illness brought an 
eminent physician to her bedside. Like every one 
else who met her he was completely charmed by her 
conversation. On one occasion he entirely forgot 



Spinster Authors of England 15 

the purpose of his visit in the fascination of her talk, 
till suddenly, recollecting himself, when he was half 
way down stairs, he cried out : " Bless me ? I forgot 
to ask the girl how she was," and hurried back to the 
room exclaiming, " How are you to-day, my poor 
child ? " 

In her 17th year she wrote a pastoral drama, 
" The Search after Happiness," a success. She had 
already a wide correspondence with distinguished 
men. One sent her this verse on her promise to 
visit his garden : 

" Blow, blow my sweetest rose, 

For Hannah More will soon be here, 
And all that crowns the ripening year 
Should triumph where she goes." 

Her father disliked pedantic women, and having 
taught her a little Latin and mathematics was 
alarmed at her progress; at twenty she was an 
uncommon linguist. But, if learned, never poky in 
her brilliant youth ; popular in London soci- 
ety ; full of spirit and humor ; a special favorite 
of Dr. Johnson, Garrick. Horace Walpole called 
her his " holy Hannah." Garrick gave her the pet 
name of " Nine," referring to the Muses. He wrote 
prologue and epilogue for her play of " Percy," a 
success, which gave her 750 pounds. She earned 
more than $150,000 by her pen, one-third of which 
she gave away, and did not begin her career until 
after thirty. Millions of her tracts and ballads were 
sold. It is said that her books were more numerous, 



16 Spinster Authors of England 

passed through more editions, printed in more 
languages, read by more people, than those of any 
woman on record. Her popular story, " Coelebs in 
Search of a Wife," unendurably tame now, went 
through ten editions in one year. Of course, she 
was severely criticised by rivals. She said she " was 
battered, hacked, scalped, tomahawked." After 
Garrick's death she never went to a theatre, even to 
see her own tragedies performed, and lived more 
quietly, but always eagerly sought for by the best 
society. Only one love affair is spoken of in con- 
nection with this beautiful woman, so witty and 
attractive, and that most unfortunate and mortify- 
ing. A rich widower, kept postponing their mar- 
riage until her friends interfered. He declared that 
he had the deepest regard and respect for Miss 
More, and at his death he bequeathed her a thousand 
pounds. She had other offers, but avoided a second 
entanglement. Most people think of Hannah More 
as an aged spinster with black mits, corkscrew curls, 
and a mob cap, always writing or presenting a 
solemn tract, ignoring her youthful fascinations. 

Her kindness to Macaulay, when a precocious 
little lad he often visited her, is pleasant to remember. 

She stimulated him to read, giving the money to 
buy his first valuable books, laying, as she said, 
" the tiny cornerstone of his library," and encouraged 
without flattery. 

If, after listening to this high estimate, you go 
to your library and taking down Hannah's prosy 



Spinster Authors of England 17 

disquisitions, rather dusty on the edges, and, turning 
over the various volumes, look for something- inter- 
esting or lively, you will be disappointed. Her 
tracts and homely poems, written for practical effect 
among the poor (for instance, the dialogue between 
the two weavers over the half-made carpet), are still 
excellent. But who reads Hannah More now ? Her 
day has gone by. Her " Percy," like Addison's 
" Cato," would be wretchedly dull on any stage. 
Towards the close of her life she fell into a common 
error, and grew narrow in her views, and unneces- 
sarily solemn. Never found time to read Scott's 
novels, and accused him of being not immoral but 
non-moral, which was unjust ; and said she would 
rather present herself at Heaven's gate with her 
tract, "The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain," in her hand, 
than encumbered with all the novels of the mighty 
" Wizard of the North." 

A good novel is as useful in its way as a good 
tract, and Jeannie Dean's character and her speech 
to the Queen in behalf of her sister, seems to me 
more Christlike, than the stilted submission of the 
saintly shepherd. 

" And when we come to die, my Leddy, its 
not what we hae dune for ourselves, but what we 
hae dune for others that we think on maist pleas- 
antly." 

" I wonder if you ever heard a story told to me 
by your countryman, Mr, Northmore, a great Dev- 
onshire reformer, one of the bad epic poets and 



18 Spinster Authors of England 

very pleasant men in which that country abounds. 
He said that Jeremy Bentham being on a visit at a 
show-house in those parts, at a time when he was 
little known except as a jurist, certainly before the 
publication of the Church of Englandism, or any 
such enormities — Mrs. Hannah More, being at a 
watering-place in the neighborhood, was minded to 
see him, and availed herself of the house, being one 
which was shown on stated days, to pay a visit to 
the philosopher. He was in the library when the 
news arrived, and the lady being already in the 
ante-chamber and no possible mode of escape pre- 
senting itself, he sent one servant to detain her a 
few minutes and employed another to build him up 
with books in a corner of the room. When the 
folios and quartos rose above his head, the curious 
lady was admitted. Must it not have been a droll 
scene? The philosopher playing at bo-peep in his 
ijitrenchment and the good lady, who had previously 
ascertained that he was in the room, peering after 
him in all the agony of baffled curiosity ! " 

I have sketched Hannah More's picture as faith- 
fully as possible, with no idea of blaming her for 
being too good, but it would be partial not to allude 
to her narrowness lest a shadow might fall on the 
picture. 

She said many good things, as : "I used to 
wonder why people should be so fond of the com 
pany of their physician, till I recollected he is the 
only person with whom one dares to talk continually 



Spinster Authors of England 19 

of one's self without interruption, contradiction, or 
censure." 

"There are only two bad things in this world, 
sin and bilcy Speaking of Woman's Rights, how 
many ways there are of being ridiculous ? I am sure 
I have as much liberty as I can make good use of, 
now I am an old maid, and when I was a young one 
I had, I dare say, more than was good for me." 

Anna Seward (1747- 1809) was a most sentimental, 
lackadaisical, affected creature, with a particularl}-" 
florid and stilted style, called by her admirers of the 
" Delia Cruscan " school the " The Swan of Litch- 
field," but who impresses more impartial observers 
as a Goose. Still, at nine years old she could repeat 
the first three books of Paradise Lost, which proves 
her appreciation of good poetry whatever we may 
think of her own. She wrote a succession of 
Elegies, Monodies, and Odes ; Sonnets, Poetical 
Epistles, and Adieus; all about Capt. Cook and Major 
Andre, and a variety of other notables ; also a 
metrical novel, " Louisa," and laid claim to the first 
fifty lines of Dr. Darwin's " Botanic Garden " ; was 
afterwards his biographer, a real misfortune for the 
doctor's fame, though a ludicrous one. Walter Scott, 
who was her literary executor, pronounced her two 
volumes of poems " absolutely execrable," and her six 
volumes of published correspondence proved an 
utter failure. I grieve to say that this voluminous 
publication was regarded as a display of " vanity, 
egotism, and malignity ! " 



20 Spinster Authors of England 

Leigh Hunt says, " Miss Seward is affected and 
superfluous, but now and then she writes a goop 
line, for example : 

' And sultry silence brooded o'er the hills,' 

and she can paint a natural picture." Horace Walpole 
wrote to the Countess of Ossory, " Misses Seward 
and Williams, and half a dozen more of those har- 
monious virgins, have no imagination, no novelty. 
Their thoughts and phrases are like their gowns, 
old remnants cut and turned." Her style is the acme 
of high-fiownativeness and stewed prunism. She 
says that Dr. Darwin purchased about the year 1777, 
" a little wild umbrageous valley, a mile from Litch- 
field, irriguous from various springs and swampy 
from their plentitude." 

When this bog was transformed into a Paradise, 
she took her tablets and pencil and, seated on a 
flowery bank in the midst of that luxurious retreat, 
composed some lines, '' while the sun was gilding 
the glen, and while birds of every plume poured 
their songs from the boughs." 

Four lines from the " Botanic Garden " will 
suffice for a specimen : 

" My plumy pairs in gay embroidery dressed, 
Form with ingenious bill the pensile nest, 
To Love's sweet notes attune the listening dell, 
And Echo sounds her soft symphonious shell." 

Richard Lovell Edgeworth, the eccentric father 
of Maria, who liked to pose as a bachelor, met Miss 
Seward at Litchfield, when " she was in the height of 



Spinster Authors of England 21 

youth and beauty, of an enthusiastic temper, a 
votary of the Muses, and of the most eloquent and 
brilliant conversation." He adds that Airs. Darwin 
had a little pique against Miss Seward, who had in 
fact been her rival with the doctor. " At Mrs. Dar- 
win's tea-table I was placed next Miss Seward, and a 
number of lively sallies escaped her that set the 
table in good humor. I remember she repeated 
some of Prior's " Henry and Emma," and dwelling 
upon Emma's tenderness she cited the care that she 
proposed to take of her lover if he were wounded, 

" To bind his wounds my finest lawns I'd tear, 
Wash them with tears, and wipe them with my hair." 

I represented that the lady who must have had 
by her own account a c/ioicc of lawns might have 
employed some of the coarse sort for this operation 
instead of having recourse to her hair. I then paid 
Miss Seward some compliments on her own beauti- 
ful tresses, and at that moment the watchful Mrs. 
Darwin took this opportunity of drinking Mrs. 
Edgewortli s health." 

As Americans, we ought to think kindly of Miss 
Seward, as she was on our side during the War for 
Independence. Boswell has recorded Johnson's re- 
mark, " I am willing to love all mankind except an 
American," adding that " his inflammable corrup- 
tions bursting with horrid fire, he breathed out 
threatenings and slaughter, calling them rascals, rob- 
bers, and pirates, and exclaiming he'd burn 'em and 
destroy 'em." Miss Seward, looking to him with mild 



22 Spinster Authors of England 

but steady astonishment, said : " Sir, this is an 
instance that we are always most violent against 
those whom we have injured." Johnson said to Miss 
Seward, " Madam, there is not anything equal to 
your description of the sea round the North Pole, in 
your ode on the death of Captain Cook." 

In one of her letters she exclaims : " How prone 
are our hearts perversely to quarrel with the friendly 
coercion of employment at the very instant in which 
it is clearing the torpid and injurious mists of una- 
vailing melancholy."" 

We come next to Jane Austen (175 5-1 8 17), who, 
like Mrs. Browning, has been called "a feminine 
Shakespeare." Her life was most simple and se- 
cluded, domestic, and she really wrote for her own 
amusement — idolized by her nephews and nieces, 
who were always pleading to go to "Auntie's Room " 
for a frolic, a petting, or a story. It was not then 
thought desirable for young ladies to study or write, 
so Miss Austen compromised matters by a large piece 
of fancy work kept on parlor table to hide her manu- 
scripts when callers appeared. Much money was 
not necessary for the moderate expenses of her quiet 
home, and so modestly did she estimate her work, 
that when she received one hundred and fifty pounds 
from the sale of " Sense and Sensibility," she consid- 
ered it a prodigious recompense. She called her ex- 
quisite word painting " little bits of ivory, two inches 

*This sort of writing emigrated to America, but died with Mrs. 
Sigourney. 



Spinster Authors of England 23 

wide." She never posed as a literary light, had a 
dislike of being lionized, was a little embarrassed 
when introductions were sought, saying, " If I am a 
wild beast I cannot help it ; it is not my fault." She 
wrote early two of her masterpieces, published before 
she was twenty-one. 

We always like to know how such a famous 
person looked. She was tall, slender, with clear bru- 
nette complexion, fine rich color, hazel eyes, brown 
curling hair. 

She was lively, graceful, witty, a good dancer, 
fond of a good play, a little satirical, full of quiet 
humor, and very lovable. She had many admirers, 
flirted a little, loved seriously once, another unfor- 
tunate romance which Miss Thackeray speaks of, 
and then settled down with her beloved sister Cas- 
sandra, to a quiet old maid life, in a happ)'' home. 
Miss Mitford, one of her warmest admirers, declared 
she would almost be willing to cut off one of her 
hands if it would enable her to write like Miss Austen 
with the other. 

Walter Scott, after reading " Pride and Preju- 
dice " for the third time, said : " That young lady 
had a talent for describing the involvements, feel- 
ings, and characters of ordinary life, which is to me 
the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bozv- 
•wow I can do myself, like any one going ; but her 
exquisite touch is denied to me. What a pity that 
so gifted a creature died so early ! " 

Coleridge would sometimes burst out into high 



24 Spinster Authors of England 

encomiums of her novels as being in their way 
perfectly genuine and individual productions, and 
Archbishop Whately was an enthusiast in her 
praise. 

Macaulay, with all his love for new novels, seemed 
never to tire of hers, and called her a prose Shakes- 
peare. He intended to write her memoir, and erect 
a monument to her memory with the proceeds. This 
biography, which would have been her best monu- 
ment, he never accomplished, but in his letters we 
find constant allusions to his delight in reading her 
stories. In our day such a woman would have had 
her memoirs written by enthusiastic admirers before 
the breath had left her body. But her talent, her 
rare gift of depicting every-day types in daily life 
with pre-Raphaelite distinctness and truth, was fully 
appreciated by many of England's most famous men. 
Seven distinguished men, among them Hallam and 
Macaulay, being asked at a dinner party to mention 
the novel which had given them the most pleasure, 
gave the name as Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen. 

Miss Thackeray says : " The simple family annals 
are not without their romance, but there is a cruel 
one for poor Cassandra, whose lover dies abroad and 
his death saddens the whole family party." 

Jane, too, " receives the addresses " (do such things 
as addresses exist nowadays ?) of a gentleman pos- 
sessed of good character and fortune and of every- 
thing in short except the subtle power of touching 
her heart." 



Spinster Authors of England 25 

And another sorrowful story. The sisters' fate 
(there is a sad coincidence and similarity in it) was 
to be undivided, their life, their experience, was the 
same. Some one without a name takes leave of 
Jane one day, promising to come back. He never 
comes back ; long afterwards they hear of his death. 
The story seems even sadder than Cassandra's, in its 
silence and uncertainty, for silence and uncertainty 
are death in life to some people." 

We have a picture of Lord Holland lying on his 
bed, agonizing with an attack of gout, while his sister 
sat beside him diverting his mind with one of Miss 
Austen's novels, of which he never wearied. 

And Sydney Smith, more than once, dwelt with 
eloquence on her merits, and said he should have 
enjoyed giving her the pleasure of reading her 
praises in the " Edinburgh." George Eliot consid- 
ered her the greatest artist that has ever written ; 
the most perfect master over the means to her end, 
"surpassing all male novelists." Tennyson and 
Howells are her devoted admirers. 

Her novels have been translated into French, and 
in the Atlantic Monthly of February, 1863, you will 
find an excellent article on this charming woman. 
To say that the Prince Regent read and liked her 
stories and invited her to examine his library seems 
a small honor in comparison with the appreciation 
of the others mentioned. With all her fondness for 
literary work she was a true woman, fond of chil- 
dren, amusing them with stories, playful doggerel, 



26 Spinster Authors of England 

and merry games, skillful with her needle, embroid- 
ering exquisitely, "great in satin-stitch," sang sweetly, 
and played well on piano. 

She inherited her love of fun from her witty and 
agreeable grandfather, of whom Mrs. Thrall wrote 
to Dr. Johnson : "Are you acquainted with Dr. Leigh, 
master of Balliol College, and are you not delighted 
with his gaiety of manner and youthful vivacity now 
that he is eighty-six years of age ?" When some 
one told him how, in a dispute among the Priory 
Counsellors, the Lord Chancellor struck the table 
with such violence that he split it. " No, no," re- 
plied the master, " I can't persuade myself that he 
split the table, though I believe he divided the 
board." 

He was once calling on a gentleman notorious for 
never opening a book, who ushered him into a room 
overlooking the Bath Road, then a great thorough- 
fare for travelers of every class, remarking, rather pom- 
pously, " This, Doctor, I call my study." Dr. Leigh, 
glancing around the room in which not a book was 
to be seen, replied, " And very well named too, sir, 
for you know Pope tells us, " The proper study of 
mankind is man." Only three days before he died, 
being told of a man whom his friends regarded as 
egged on to matrimony, as he married after a long 
illness cured by eating eggs, he trumped the joke 
saying, " Then may the yoke sit easy on him." 

Two of Miss Austen's epigrams have been pre- 
served. The first was suggested by reading in a 



Spinster Authors of England 27 

newspaper the marriage of Mr. Gell to Miss Gill of 
Eastborne. 

" At Eastburn, Mr. Gell, from being perfectly well, 
Became dreadfully ill for love of Miss Gill ; 
So he said with some sighs, ' I'm the slave of your ii's, 
Restore if you please, by accepting my ee's.' " 

The second on the marriasfe of a middle-aeed 
flirt with a Mr. Wake, whom gossips averred she 
would have scorned in her prime. 

" Maira, good-humored, and handsome and tall, 

For a husband was at her last stake, 
And having in vain danced at many a ball. 

Is now happy io Jianp at a Wake / " 

Her novels were at first published anonymously, 
which prevented her enjoying the praise they re- 
ceived. She received seven hundred pounds for her 
novels. The old verger in Winchester Cathedral 
had been so often asked to point out her grave, that 
he inquired of some traveler if " she ever did any- 
thing in particular." She had a happy, peaceful life 
and left behind an enduring fame. 

Jane Porter, another novelist, now comes upon 
the scene (i 776-1 850). She began the system of his- 
torical novel-writing which attained the climax of 
renown in the hands of Scott. Like Jane Austen, 
she lived in a very quiet way with her mother and 
her sister Anna, who also wrote novels. All that we 
need to know of her is that she wrote " Thaddeus 
of Warsaw " and the " Scottish Chiefs," both of which 
were famous in their day. 



28 Spinster Authors of England 

Thaddeus was translated into several of the Con- 
tinental languages. A relation of the Polish Patriot, 
Kosciusko, sent her a gold ring containing a minia- 
ture of the hero, and Gen. Gardiner, who was then 
British Ambassador at the Court of vStanislaus, could 
hardly believe that some of the scenes could have 
been described by one who was not an eye witness. 
In 1809, appeared the Scottish Chiefs, and Scott ad- 
mitted to George IV that this was the veritable be- 
getter of the Waverly novels. 

There was a touch of Old World and sentimental 
eloquence in her manners which we shall hardly see 
reproduced. She conversed like an accomplished 
woman who had kept much worshipful company in 
her time,without, however, the slightest parade or pre- 
tension. Maginn in " The Fraserians " (a delightful 
book to own) rambles on in his own way about her, 
saying, as he looked at her picture, "handsome the 
face is still." " We hope Miss Porter has sufficient 
philosophy to pardon us for that fatal adverb. Time 
and tide wait for no man, nor woman either, and there 
is the fact extant that she published the ' Spirit of the 
Elbe ' in 1 800, some five-and-thirty years ago. Al- 
lowing that she was then but twenty, it brings her 
now-a-days to the Falstaffian age of some seven-and- 
fifty, or inclining to threescore. Many a lady of Miss 
Porter's standing, if she had kept Miss Porter's good 
looks, could well smuggle off ten or a dozen years 
from the account if she had not dabbled in printer's 
work. Joe Miller informs us that a coal porter hav- 



Spinster Authors of England 29 

ing inquired what the crime was for which he saw a 
man hanging at Tyburn tree, and being told it was 
forgery, exclaimed : ' Ah ! that's what comes of 
knowing how to read and write, my good fellow ! ' 

" We are tempted to make a similar exclamation 
when we find a lady rendering the footsteps of 
time traceable by manifesting her powers of pen- 
manship." 

" In private she is a quiet and good-humored lady, 
rather pious and fond of going to evening parties, 
where she generally contrives to be seen patronizing 
some sucking lion or lioness. In which occupation 
may she long continue, devoting her mornings to 
the prayer-book and the evenings to the conversa- 
zione. 

' ' And may no ill event cut shorter 
The easy course of Miss Jane Porter." 

Joanna Baillie, 1762-1798, being a veritable Scotch 
woman, can hardly be classed among the English 
spinsters, although she spent most of her long life 
near London, the center of a literary circle, literally 
the friend of two generations of authors. Her ambi- 
tion was to be a dramatist, and her plan to devote a 
play to each passion, but they were very poor imita- 
tions of Shakespeare and Beaumont and Fletcher, just 
as her Scottish songs have the rhyme and the pro- 
nunciation of Burns without his spice and spirit and 
soul. There was a want of business in her scenes. 
Her stock of words was deplorably scanty, her pages 
were marred by affectations of antiquated phrase- 



30 Spinster Authors of England 

ology, and she unduly magnified little things, as 
when alluding to goose flesh she says : 

" When every hair-pit in my shrunken skin 
A knotted knoll becomes." 

Not a pleasing idea of the state of that young 
woman's person. 

The Edinburgh Revieiv decided that she must 
not write comedies and could not possibly write a 
tragedy. 

Still, her name commands attention. No woiuan 
before had attempted so high a vein of poetry. 

When she first appeared, the drama throughout 
England seemed expiring, and she roused it to 
new life. 

Mrs. Siddons and Kemble, both acted in De 
Montfort, and that would make anything a success. 

She made the mistake of attempting too much. 
Her voice was pitched for a more select audience, 
not for the public. 

Her fireside lyrics are quite channing. Very 
appropriately (as an old maid) she wrote poetical 
addresses to her Kitten and a Teapot, both of them 
worth reading, and a touching tribute to her sister, 
Agnes, a spinster, too, with whom she had lived for 
years, and to whom she was thoroughly devoted. 

Scott, who always said such kind things of 
women, declared " that her merit as a dramatist was 
so great to prevent all attempts at competition on 
his part," and Lord Byron said: "Women (saving 
Joanna Baillie) cannot write tragedy ; they have 



Spinster Authors of England 31 

not seen enough nor felt enough of life for it." Yet 
Byron, when invited to attend this good woman to 
the opera, sat and made faces at her all the evening. 

As Maria Edgeworth (1767- 1849) was proud to be 
called an Irish woman and Irish Story Teller, she 
will not be dwelt upon in this rapid survey. She 
has lately had a great deal of attention, Mrs. Grace 
Oliver having written her life and also edited some 
of her stories, and she figures in the "Eminent 
Women " series. This will gratify Donald Mitchell, 
who, in a book for children, devotes a chapter to her. 
" Those stories which were the delight of all young 
people forty years ago, and those novels which were 
the delight of all the grown people of her time," and 
pleads that it is quite too soon to forget good Miss 
Edgeworth and her books. Like Miss Baillie, she 
aimed to make each work an elucidation of one 
passion or one vice. Scott averred that it was her 
tender, humorous, admirable delineations of Irish 
character which led him to do the same thing for 
his country, and Tourgenieff, the late Russian nov- 
elist, said he should never have written about the 
woes of the peasanty of his land if not inspired by 
what Miss Edgeworth had done. 

The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth have 
been edited by Augustus J. C. Hare. She said : 

"As a woman, my life, wholly domestic, can offer 
nothing of interest to the public." 

Macaulay considered her "the second woman of 
her age." 



32 Spinster Authors of England 

Scott said of Simple Susan that when the boy 
brings back the lamb to the little girl, there is noth- 
ing for it but to put down the book and cry. She 
remarked of Madame Roland, "She was a great 
woman and died heroically, but I don't think she 
became more amiable and certainly not more happy 
by meddling with politics ; for — her head is cut off 
and her husband has shot himself." Here is a 
capital epigram : 

" Theory was born in Brobdignag and Practice in 
Lilliput." 

Next in order, Jane Taylor, 1 783-1 824. The 
" Original Poems for Infant Minds, by the Taylor 
Family," did a great and good work in their day. 
They sound oddly enough now, and the little folks 
accustomed to the delicious nonsense verses of Ed- 
ward Lear, the grotesque playfulness of the rhymes 
in Lewis Carrol's stories, and the really beautiful 
poetry now written expressly for their delectation, 
would hardly relish these crude efforts to instruct 
children by means of poetry suited to their capacity. 

The preface alludes to them as " that interesting 
little race," as if they were a quite distinct species 
from their parents — like the Aztecs*! 

The book opens rather dismally. First poem, 
" The Churchyard." 

" And see, from those darkly green trees 
Of cypress and holly and yew, 
That wave their black arms in the breeze, 
The old village church is in view. 



Spinster Authors of England 33 

The owl from her ivied retreat 
Screams hoarse to the winds of the night, 
And the clock with its solemn repeat 
Has tolled the departure of night. " 

This is followed by a cheerful, alluring invitation : 

" My child, let us wander alone, 
When half the wide world is in bed. 
And read o'er the mouldering stone 
That tells of the mouldering dead. 
And let us remember it well. 
That we must as certainly die ; 
For us, too, may toll the sad bell. 
And in the cold earth we must lie. 

" You are not so healthy and gay. 
So young, so active, and bright. 
That death cannot snatch you away. 
Or some dreadful accident smite. 
Here lie both the young and the old. 
Confined in the coffin so small, 
And the earth closes over them cold, 
And the grave-worm devours them all." 

In a poem on , " Beasts, Birds, and Fishes," 
Adelaide Taylor managed to bring in a metrical 
catalogue an entire menagerie, without the slightest 
connection : 

" The Dog will come when he is called. 
The Cat will walk away, 
The Monkey's cheek is very bald. 
The Goat is fond of play. 
The Parrot is a prate-a-pace, 
Yet knows not what she says. 
The noble Horse will win the race. 
Or draw you in a chaise. 
The Sparrow steals the cherry ripe. 



34 Spinster Authors of England 

The Elephant is wise, 
The Blackbird charms you with his pipe, 
The false Hyena cries. 
The Hen guards well her little chicks, 
The useful Cow is meek. 
The Beaver builds with mud and sticks. 
The Lapwing loves to squeak. 
The spotted Tiger's fond of blood. 
The Pigeon feeds on peas. 
The Duck will gobble in the mud. 
The Mice will eat your cheese, 
A Lobster's black, when boiled he's red, 
The harmless Lamb must bleed. 
The Codfish has a clumsy head, 
I The Goose on grass will feed." 

The moral, from which there is no escape, comes 
at the close of the ninth verse : 

" The child that does not these things know, 
May yet be thought a dunce ; 
But I will up in knowledge grow, 
As youth can come but once." 

Jane, under the nom de phinie " Q. Q. " (a doubly 
Qrious signature), published two small volumes of 
tiresome, sermonizing essays, relieved occasionally 
by something really bright and entertaining, like 
the " Discontented Pendulum," an allegory so popu- 
lar with our grandmothers, found in most of the 
reading books of the last generation, and now used 
by elocutionists as an example of the circumflex, as 
employed to express irony and gentle sarcasm : 

"It is vastly easy for you. Mistress Dial, who 
have always, as everybody knows, set yourself up 



Spinster Authors of England 35 

above me — it is vastly easy for you, I say, to accuse 
other people of laziness." 

And " the Weights, who had never been accused 
of light conduct." 

But there is little of that sort. The reading for 
children was either in the form of a short sermon or a 
prolonged conundrum, in stilted, formal language. 
Due credit must be given to Jane Taylor and her 
sisters, for their work was far better than any that 
preceded it. Some of the best have lately been 
revived and published. 

And now we come to dear, rosy, sunny-faced, 
brave-hearted Miss Mitford (1786-185 5), whose life 
was one long struggle, hidden by a patient, cheery 
smile ; the highest type of a dutiful, loving daughter. 
Her mother was an heiress, her father a handsome, 
lazy, selfish spendthrift and gambler, who utterly 
ruined their future by wasting all the money of the 
mother. She won, at the age of ten, twenty thou- 
sand pounds in a lottery ticket, and Dr. Mitford prom- 
ised to settle this sum on her, but this was soon 
squandered, like the wife's fortune. As Mr. Stod- 
dard puts it : " To sum Dr. Mitford up in a word, he 
was a beast." 

So the brave little woman had to support both, 
and did it without a murmur, for he had not even the 
grace to die, but lived on most unconscionably until 
his child nearly broke down under the terrible weight. 

She says : '* If he could tell how c/e^dt presses upon 
the mind — upon the heart, as if it were a sin, and 



36 Spinster Authors of England 

sometimes, I do believe, makes me ill, when other- 
wise I should be well, he would be more careful. 
But men do not change at eighty." 

" I am doubly thankful to have my dear father 
spared to me. If I could but give my whole life to 
him, reading to him, driving out with him, playing 
cribbage with him, never five minutes away from 
him, except when he is asleep — for this is what 
makes him happy — it would be the breath of life 
to me ! " 

After he was utterly ruined financially, she 
writes : "■ Whatever your embarrassments may be, 
of one thing I am certain, that the world does not 
contain so proud, so happy, or so fond a daughter. 
I would not exchange my father, even though we 
toiled together for our daily bread, for any man on 
earth, though he could pour all the gold of Peru 
into my lap." 

He died at eighty-two, deep in debt. " Every- 
body shall be paid," wrote Mary, " if I sell the gown 
off my back, or pledge my little pension." 

Poetry was not her forte, but she wrote many 
poetic dramas, some of which were quite successful 
when put on the stage. Her most popular work was 
a series of sketches called " Our Village." The 
first volume passed through fourteen editions, and 
Stoddard declares that " never before or since has 
the country been painted with such a loving and 
accurate pencil as hers." She also published two 
poor novels and several volumes of poetry, but she 



Spinster Authors of England 37 

was neither poet nor novelist. Her " Recollections 
of a Literary Life," and her letters will always be 
enjoyed. 

In the letters of Mrs. Browning to Richard 
Home frequent allusions are made to her friend, 
Miss Mitford, and visits to Three Mile Cross, the 
original of " Our Village." 

She says, "It would be impossible for any en- 
graving or photograph, however excellent as to 
features, to convey a true likeness of Mary Russell 
Mitford. During one of these visits Charlotte Cush- 
man was also staying at the cottage, and exclaimed 
the first time Miss Mitford left the room, " What a 
bright face it is ! " This effect of summer bright- 
ness all over the countenance was quite remarkable. 
A floral flush overspread the whole face, which 
seemed to carry its own light with it, for it was the 
same indoors as out. The silver hair shone, the 
forehead shone, the cheeks shone, and above all the 
eyes shone ; it was very like a rosy apple in the 
sun. The forehead and chin were strong. 

She was, to speak the truth, decidedly fat, 
and always craved elegance of style and figure, dis- 
liking what she called her " rotundity and rubicund- 
ity." 

Her " Recollections " are full of agreeable anec- 
dotes ; her criticisms one-sided and worthless. 

From the " Noctes Ambrosianse " : 

Shepherd. — "I'm just verra fond o' that lassie 
Mitford. She has an ee like a hawk's that misses 



38 Spinster Authors of England 

naething however far aff, and yet like a dove's, that 
sees only what is nearest and dearest and round 
about the hame circle o' its central nest. I'm just 
excessive fond o' Miss Mitford. I'm fond o' a gude 
female writers. They're a bonnie and every passage 
they write carries, as it ought to do, their femininity 
alang wi it. The young gentlemen of England should 
be ashamed o' theirsells for letting her name be Mit- 
ford. They should marry her whether she will or 
no, for she wad mak baith a useful and agreeable 
wife. That's the best creetishism on her warks." 

I find but one allusion anywhere to matrimony, 
and this in a note to some one who congratulated 
her on a supposed approach of that condition : 

" Alas ! my dear friend, you are quite mistaken, I 
assure you, I am not going to be married. ' No such 
good luck,' as papa says. I have not been courted, 
and*^ I am not in love. So much for this question. 
If I ever should happen to be going to be married 
(elegant construction this) I will then not fail to let 
you into the secret, but alas ! alas ! alas ! ! In such 
a tJicn I write a never." 

It is related of the dear old lady that she once 
went to an evening party wearing a peculiarly 
showy cap from which she had forgotten to remove 
the price mark, and walked about in her gracious 
way with " Cheap at one pound six," on a fluttering 
ribbon, in benign unconsciousness of her ludicrous 
oversight. 

Miss Sedgwick's visit to Miss Mitford. 



Spinster Authors of England 39 

" She led us directly through the house into her 
garden, a perfect bouquet of flowers. * I must show 
you my geraniums while it is light, for I love them 
next to my father.' The garden is filled, matted 
with flowering shrubs and vines. The trees are 
wreathed with honeysuckles and roses, and the girls 
have brought away the most splendid specimens of 
heartsease to press in their journals. Oh, that I 
could give my countrywomen a vision of this little 
paradise of flowers that they might learn how taste 
and industry and an earnest love and study of the 
art of garden culture might triumph over small space 
and humble means." 

You remember Mrs. Browning's sonnet : 
TO MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. 

IN HER GARDEN. 

" What time I lay these rhymes anear thy feet, 
Benignant friend, I will not proudly say, 
As better poets use, ' These J^owers I lay,' 
Because I would not wrong thy roses sw^eet. 
Blaspheming so their name. And yet repeat, 
Thou, overleaning them this springtime day, 
With heart as open to love as theirs to May. 
Low rooted verse may reach some heavenly heart, 
Even like my blossoms, if as nature true, 
Though not as precious. Thou art unperplext, 
Dear friend, in whose dear writings drops the dew, 
And blow the natural airs — thou who art next 
To nature's self in cheering the world's view — 
To preach a sermon on so known a text. " 

She was devotedly fond of her pets, says Mr. 
Fields. 



40 Spinster Authors of England 

" Her voice had a peculiar ringing sweetness in 
it, rippling out sometimes like a beautiful chime of 
silver bells. When she told a comic story, hitting 
off some one of her acquaintances, she joined in with 
the laugh at the end with great heartiness and 
na'ivettfy 

" Her dogs and her geraniums were her great 
glories. She used to write me long letters about 
' Fanchon,' a dog whose personal acquaintance I 
had made." 

She would have agreed with Hamerton : "I 
humbly thank Divine Providence for having invented 
dogs." 

Walter Savage Landor wrote some lines to her a 

few months before she died : 

" None hath told 
More pleasing tales to young and old. 
Fondest she was of Father Thames, 
But rambled to Hellenic streams, 
Nor even then could any tell 
The country's purer charms so well 
As Mary Mitford." 

Harriet Martineau said : " Miss Mitford's descrip- 
tions of scenery, brutes, and human beings have 
such singular merit that she may be regarded as the 
founder of a new style." They were devoted 
friends. She was grateful for the kind reception 
given to her books in America. " It takes ten years 
to make a literary reputation in England, but Amer- 
ica is wiser and bolder and dares to say at once, 
' This is fine.' " She also dared to say : " I have seen 



Spinster Authors of England 41 

things of Longfellow's as fine as anything in Camp- 
bell or Coleridge or Tennyson or Hood." As an old 
lady she was as lovely as a winter rose, retaining her 
vivacity and enthusiasm. 

" I love poetry and people as well at sixty as I 
did at sixteen." 

In summer time when she gave strawberry par- 
ties at her cottage, the road leading to it was 
crow^ded with carriages of all the rank and fashion 
in the country. 

Her conversation was simply charming; con- 
sidered better than her finished compositions. 

She was a successful dramatist, edited several 
Annuals, was a frequent • contributor to periodicals, 
wrote delightful letters, but she will live through 
the simple annals of village life, which are so natural 
and vivid that they seem to have written themselves. 

I do not believe it is generally known that in 
1832 she made a collection of American Stories for 
Young People. 

She said : " In turning over a large mass of the 
lighter literature of America, the little books in- 
tended for children appeared to me to possess 
peculiar excellence, distinguished by the acute 
observation and cheerful common sense to be ex- 
pected from the country of Franklin." 

She retained the "Americanisms" and gave her 
reason : "It seems to me no mean part of an en- 
larged and liberal education to show our English 
children that the standard of gentility differs in dif- 



42 Spinster Authors of England 

ferent countries, and that intelligent and cultivated 
people may, without the slightest tincture of vul- 
garity, use words and idioms of which these little 
exclusives never heard before. Thus, in America a 
shop is called a store and autumn the fall, and chil- 
dren frequently address their parents with the 
affectionate and homely appellations of father and 
mother, instead of the colder and more infantile 
elegancies of papa and mamma." 

Miss Martineau (1802- 1876), seems a sharp con- 
trast to Miss Mitford, but those who knew her best, 
testified of sweetness as well as strength. No one 
has an indifferent opinion about her if he studies 
her character at all. 

Miss Mitford said : " The woman I like best is 
Harriet Martineau, who is cheerful, frank, cordial, 
and right-minded in a very high degree." 

To some she is a heroine of free thought, an 
uncrowned queen. "A product of the higher culture 
of the nineteenth century," or, as Mrs. Browning 
sketched her, 

" The noblest female intelligence between the seas, 
As sweet as spring; as ocean, deep." 

Others differ so positively with her decisions, that 
they look upon her as repulsive and her influence as 
dangerous. All must agree as to her ability. No 
woman of modern or past time has left such a nunv 
ber of solid, interesting, instructive books. She 
wrote with unusual power and facility on Political 



Spinster Authors of England 43 

Economy, History, Psychology, Education, the Forest 
and Game Laws, Health, Husbandry, and Handi- 
craft, The Effect of Machinery on Wages, The 
Relation of Wages and Population, Free Trade, Pro- 
tection, was a successful journalist, a regular writer 
of leaders for a London daily (1642 Articles for Daily 
Nezvs), shaping the current politics of her day, in- 
fluencing men and nations. Also published several 
volumes of travels, books for children, was a fre- 
quent contributor to the best reviews. 

She wrote a series of tales illustrating important 
doctrines of Political Economy, saying : " I knew 
the work wanted doing, and that I could do it." 
These tales had a tremendous and unlooked-for suc- 
cess. 

Lord Brougham declared " the whole Society for 
the Diffusion of Knowledge had been driven out of 
the field by a little deaf woman at Norwich." 

When she visited the United States she became 
an abolitionist. 

W. E. Forster said : " It seemed as if Harriet 
Martineau, .alone, kept England straight in regard 
to America." She was a practical philanthropist, 
started a Mechanics' Institute, a building society, 
evening lectures for the people, and thought of 
starting a correspondence class. 

Even when kept in bed by illness, she went on 
writing, and produced that pleasant work, " Life in a 
Sick Room." She managed her little farm at Amble- 
side with the skill of a practical agriculturist, and 



44 Spinster Authors of England 

was regarded as an affectionate friend and peculiarly 
thoughtful and generous neighbor. 

Here I pause to take a long breath, and to admire 
anew such versatility of achievement under such de- 
pressing conditions. She said : " My life has had no 
spring. When three senses out of five are deficient, 
the difficulty of cheerful living is great." 

Her childish days were pitiably sad : first, as a 
half-starved body, with an undemonstrative mother, 
sternly just, and lacking in common tenderness, then 
afflicted with the wild vagaries of a diseased imagin- 
ation, suffering from trifling causes, deprived of the 
sense of smell and of taste, and at twenty hopelessly 
deaf. Try to realize her position, and always judge 
her leniently. She determined never to inquire 
what was said, as she dreaded becoming a burden to 
her friends. She felt that no one cared for her, and 
when her brother James was obliged to leave her, he 
advised her to try to forget her loneliness by an at- 
tempt at authorship. She wrote laboriously at first, 
" coldly correct, " and without marked signs of 
genius, choosing the Latin noiii de pluuie " Discipu- 
lus," a masculine name, like George Sand, George 
Eliot, and the Bronte sisters. She became engaged, 
and for a short time was truly happy. She poured 
out her soul in letters and in disguised characters in 
print. She wrote : " Do you really think there are 
any people that have passed through life without 
knowing what that moment was, that stir in one's 
heart, as being first sure that one is beloved ? It is 



Spinster Authors of England 45 

more like the soul getting free of the body and 
rushing into Paradise, I should think." But it was, 
after all, a sad and stormy experience. They were 
both abnormally sensitive and over anxious. At last 
her lover became insane, and her mother, as cruel in 
her. way as Dr. Mitford in his, refused to allow her 
daughter to visit him. It was inexcusable prudish- 
ness. After his death came the sudden loss of all 
their property. One of this young clergyman's 
causes of mental distress was the fact that Miss 
Martineau had wealth, therefore a poor man ought 
not to try to win her. Not a prevailing source of 
anxiety among young men in general ! And as all 
the money was soon to be swallowed up in a finandial 
crash, this special form of worry was quite futile, as 
is all worry. Miss Martineau said afterwards, " If I 
had a husband dependent on me for his happiness, 
the responsibility would have made me wretched. If 
he had not depended on me for his happiness, I 
should have been jealous." It was, perhaps, best that 
her lover went when he did ! 

Her fortitude, energy, and persistence should not 
be called masculine, but womanly, true womanly en- 
durance and heroic patience and courage. 

She was left with absolutely only one shilling 
and her dreadful mother to discourage all her efforts, 
with a silly aunt who gave her some pieces of silk, 
lilac, blue, and pink, to make into little bags to earn 
a few pennies ! Imagine Harriet Martineau giving 
herself up to making patchwork and crazy quilts I 



46 Spinster Authors of England 

She was never impractical. She said : " I could make 
shirts and puddings, and iron and mend, and get my 
bread by my needle, if necessary. And at first she 
did sew all day, and sit up most of the night to 
write. Her articles were often refused, and the pay 
for a long time was ridiculously small. 

" It was truly life I lived in those days." 

In March, 1830, she received at the age of twenty- 
nine, the three prizes {£4$) offered by a Unitarian 
Association for promoting their faith among the 
Roman Catholics, Mohammedans, and Jews, a con- 
vincing proof of her ability. She was deeply relig- 
ious in her younger days and prepared a small vol- 
ume of devotional exercises, prayer, and meditations 
for the use of young people. Later on she lost her 
faith in prayer, and finally gave up all belief in a 
future existence. " I have no wish for future expe- 
rience, nor have I any fear of it. I am frankly sat- 
isfied to have done with life. I neither wish to live 
longer here nor to find life elsewhere. It seems to 
me simply absurd to expect it." 

Her last year was spent in her pretty country 
home at Ambleside. She studied practical farming 
and made it pay, her farm of two acres supporting 
the laborer and his wife, and the home had a con- 
stant supply of vegetables, milk, eggs, etc. 

Mrs. Wordsworth pronounced her a model in 
household economy ; always careful to make her 
servants happy. Miss Bronte spoke, after a week's 
visit, of the combination of the highest mental cult- 
ure with the nicest discharee of feminine duties. 



Spinster Authors of England 47 

I like to read how she set up a cross-pole fence 
around her estate, and, like a true woman, planted 
roses all along the line to wreathe and decorate it in 
summer. She had a keen sense of humor, dearly 
loved a good story, was truly affectionate in private 
life, with a warm and sensitive heart ; never refused 
herself to children callers. By the way, she had an 
immense acquaintance and found her social duties 
rather irksome. Sidney Smith advised her to hire a 
carriage and engage an inferior authoress to go round 
in it to drop her cards. 

Her complete cure by magnetism, after years of 
suffering, excited great comment, and, as a result, 
her beloved brother James was hopelessly alienated 
from her. She simply dared to tell the truth and 
express gratitude for her wonderful recovery. 

Her last fancy work was a blanket for some little 
baby. Does not her character seem less hard and 
unlovely to you as you study it impartially? De- 
prived of all that is best and most precious in a 
woman's life, never knowing a mother's love, shut 
out by her deafness from the society where she 
would have shone so brilliantly, how much she 
accomplished, how nobly she struggled. 

As a spinster author, I will quote one of her sensi- 
ble remarks about marriage : " Women who are fur- 
nished with but one object — marriage, must be as unfit 
for anything when that aim is accomplished, as if they 
never had any object at all." " She served the 



48 Spinster Authors of England 

Right, that is God, all her life," said Florence Night- 
ingale. 

James Payn, in his " Literary Recollections," does 
complete justice to a great woman who has been long 
misunderstood — Harriet Martineau. " To call Miss 
Martineau a deaf and disagreeable atheist is, in the 
opinion of many persons, to treat her according to 
her deserts. A great philosopher, who was, evi- 
dently, not amiable, used to pretend that Miss Mar- 
tineau could always hear when she liked, and only 
used her trumpet when she wanted to hear ; whereas, 
at other times, she laid it down as a protection 
against argument. Nothing could be more untrue." 
Mr. Payn lays stress upon the domesticity and 
tenderness of Miss Martineau's nature. She was 
always anxious to do good to one of her friends. 
Mr. Payn says, for instance, " A year after my first 
introduction to her I came to Ambleside a married 
man, and my first child was born there in the winter. 
Her kindness to myself aud my wife I shall never 
forget ; I went in and out of the knoll as I pleased, 
like a cat which had a hole cut in the door for it, 
and her library was not only placed entirely at my 
service while on the premises, but I was permitted 
to take home with me whatever books I wanted." 
When the child was born — she was named after 
Miss Martineau — the latter wrote to Mr. Payn in 
this lovable spirit : "I send to the back door (for 
quiet's sake) for a bulletin, and shall continue to do 
so instead of coming, so long as quiet is necessary. 



Spinster Authors of England 49 

Oh ! your news makes me so happy. Your little 
Christmas rose ! I am glad it was a clear bright morn- 
ing when it began to blow. How happy your dear 
wife must be, only not too happy to sleep, I hope. 
Come here, you know, as much as you like, and make 
any use of me and mine." Miss Martineau appears, 
indeed, as a sympathetic and noble personality in 
Mr. Payn's bright pages. 

" There never was such an industrious lady," said 
the maid, who was with her the last eleven years of 
her life. " When I caught sight of her, just once, 
leaning back in her chair, with her arms hanging 
down, and looking as though she wasn't even think- 
ing, it gave me quite a turn. I felt she must be ill 
to sit like that." 

Her wise brother said to her, " Now, dear, leave 
it to other women to make shirts and darn stockings, 
and do you devote yourself to writing." She said: 

" I am, in truth, very thankful for not having 
married at all. I am, probably, the happiest sin- 
gle woman in England, and am glad my fortune 
went. 

" Many and many a time since have I said that, 
but for that loss of money, I might have lived on in 
the ordinary provincial method, of ladies with smiall 
means, sewing and economizing and growing nar- 
rower every year. Whereas, by being thrown on 
my own resources, I have worked hard and usefully, 
have friends, reputation, and independence ; seen the 



50 Spinster Authors of England 

world abundantly abroad and at home, and, in short, 
have truly lived instead of vegetated." 

We must not forget Matilda Betham, the beloved 
friend of Coleridge, Southey, Charles and Mary 
Lamb, Mrs. Barbauld, and many other persons of 
that time, who, at the age of fourteen, read Thomas 
Paine's works, and set herself to refute his argu- 
ments. She, like so many of our spinster authors, 
had no advantages of education beyond those 
afforded by her father's library and his teaching. 
In those days, women lived in terror of being thought 
learned, but her friends encouraged her aspirations, 
both literary and artistic. " I tell you," said one, 
" for the thousandth time, that you are full of genius ; 
several paths to fame lie open to you, and if you 
don't continue to march through one of them, you 
deserve to have your mental feet cut off." 

Her portraits were charming, but there were no 
art schools for women, no thorough teaching. Still 
her pictures were exhibited at Somerset House. She 
wrote poetry for the magazines and prepared a Bio- 
graphical Dictionary of Celebrated Women. 

Her declining years were spent in London. At 
certain literary receptions, the oddly-dressed old 
lady, who entered the room leaning on a cane, her 
face beaming with animation and intelligence, was 
usually surrounded by a little court. " I would rather 
talk to Matilda Betham than to the most beautiful 
young woman in the world," said one of her many 
admirers. She inherited her ready wit from her 



Spinster Authors of England 51 

father, who lived to be ninety-six. Almost his last 
words were a witticism. He was walking up and 
down the room leaning on his daughter's arm the 
day before he died, and said smiling, " I'm walking 
slowly but I'm going fast." 

There are many other literary spinsters who de- 
serve much more than honorable mention, but you 
know we're going " 'cross lots," and must not tarry. 

As the beautiful Mary Berry (1762- 185 2), who 
shone in society for nearly seventy years, whose 
memoirs are more interesting than the average 
novel, the special friend of Horace Walpole and his 
literary executor, besides publishing a History of 
England and France and a life of Lady Rachel Rus- 
sell. 

After all her social triumphs and universal popu- 
larity, Miss Berry gave her verdict in favor of " the 
dusty highway of married life " and owned her lone- 
liness. 

Caroline Herschel, the distinguished astronomer 
(1750^1848), who discovered eight comets, and gave 
to the world a general index of reference to every 
observation of every star inserted in the British Cat- 
alogue. She is so associated with her brother Wil- 
liam that we cannot think of one without the other. 
She was his constant helper for fifty years. Night 
after night she shared his vigils, wrote down his 
observations as he made them, and when he was 
sleeping in the morning reduced the rough jottings 
to clearness and planned the labor of the next even- 



52 Spinster Authors of England 

ing. Reversing the usual time of woman's sweeping 
we often read, " Swept the heavens from nine to six." 

Here are some of the points she wrote down to 
ask her brother about at breakfast : 

" Given the true time of the transit — take a 
transit." 

" Time of a star's motion to be turned into space." 

" A logarithm given to find the angle." 

With all this care she kept the house with mar- 
velous economy, and in every spare moment, when 
she should have been napping, her tireless fingers 
were knitting, knitting for the nephews and nieces 
in Germany. 

And such lovely modesty ! She only " minded 
the heavens " for her brother, and said sincerely: " I 
am nothing ; I have done nothing. All I am I know 
I owe to my brother. I am only a tool which he 
shaped to his use ; a well-trained puppy dog would 
have done as much." 

Yet she was an original thinker. Scientific men 
gladly gave her that praise. How often it happens 
that great men and great causes have some helper 
of which the outside world knows but little. 

She is the devoted sister, as Miss Mitford was the 
model daughter. She might have been successful as 
a public singer ; all that ambition was put aside. She 
lived most economically, rarely spending more than 
forty dollars a year on herself. 

William worked night and day ; she fed him that 
he miofht lose no time. 



. Spinster Authors of England 53 

Her ink often froze as she was working ; if it 
were not for cloudy nights she must have died of 
overwork. 

" In her latest moments her only thought for her- 
self was embodied in a request that a lock of her 
beloved brother's hair might be laid with her in her 
coffin." 

The Astronomical Society of London rewarded 
her work with a gold medal in 1828. She lived to 
be almost " a centurion," as Mrs. Partington would 
say, nearly ninety-eight years old. Side by side 
stand the brother and sister. Without her unwavering 
love and steadfast service he could never have 
achieved what he did. Give to her then, at least, a 
third of Alison's eloquent tribute : 

" Herschel, by multiplying with incredible labor 
and skill the powers of the telescope, was enabled to 
look further into space than man had ever done be- 
fore, discover a world hitherto unseen in the firma- 
ment, and in the Georgium Sidas add ' a new string 
to the lyre of heaven.' " 

This story suggests another devoted brother and 
sister, Charles and Mary Lamb. Every one knows 
all about that pathetic oft-told tale, Mary (1764- 
1847), owes her literary fame to her "Tales from 
Shakespeare," and original " Poetry for Children." 

" You must die first, Mary," he said, yet she sur- 
vived him thirteen years. When she was ill and 
absent Charles wrote : " I am like a fool, bereft of her 
co-operation." Again : " I expect Mary will get 



54 Spinster Authors of England 

better before many weeks are gone ; but at present I 
feel my daily and hourly prop has fallen from me. 
I totter and stagger with weakness, for nobody can 
supply her place to me." 

Read this sonnet written in an asylum in " a lucid 
interval." 

TO MY SISTER. 
" If from my lips some angry accents fell, 

Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind, 
'Twas but the error of a sickly mind 

And troubled thoughts clouding the purer well 
And waters clear of reason ; and for me 
Let this my verse the poor atonement be. 

My verse which thou to praise wert e'er inclined 
Too highly, and with a partial eye to see 
No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show 

Kindest affection ; and wouldst oft-times lend 
An ear to the desponding love-sick lay, 
Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay 

But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, 

Mary, to thee, my sister, and my friend." 

She is the Bridget of his Elia Essays. 

Next comes Miss Elizabeth Smith, the feminine 
Mezzof anti ( 1 7 1 6- 1 806), who taught herself the Latin, 
Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Spanish, and 
German languages, wrote well in prose and verse, 
and published memoirs of Frederick and Margaret 
Klopstock. 

Helen Maria Williams (1762- 1827), a voluminous 
author, at first a warm supporter of the French 
Revolution, imprisoned at Paris on that account, 
later, a friend of the Bourbon. She wrote legend- 



Spinster Authors of England 55 

ary tales, novels, odes, and miscellaneous poems, 
several volumes of letters of travel, various transla- 
tions, but will be remembered by that well-known 
hymn : 

"Whilst Thee I seek, Protecting Power." 

At the last she was 'a hypochondriac, often sum- 
moning her intimate friends to her death-bed from 
from which she rose with rapidity and frequency. 
One wit, after being present on several such trying 
occasions, remarked " he could not afford to waste 
so much time on a mortuary uncertainty." 

The learned Mary Astell (1668-1731), one of the 
first to advocate the higher education of women, and 
proposed a college for co-education. She was a writer 
of considerable note in her day, and published an 
" Essay in Defense of the Female Sex," with re- 
flections on marriage, caused it is said by a disap- 
pointment of her own. Also six familiar essays on 
Marriage, Crosses in Love, and Friendship. In these 
she dwells on the rights and privileges of women 
with some asperity. As she grew older and more re- 
signed to her solitary fate, she wrote on religious 
themes. She was so devoted to her studies that 
when she saw visitors coming whom she knew to be 
incapable of any improving conversation, she would 
look out of her window and jestingly tell them, as 
Cato did Nasica, " Miss Astell is not at home," and so 
kept gossips from making inroads on her precious 
time ! Miss Philipps is remembered by a book, en- 



56 Spinster Authors of England 

titled " My Life, and what shall I do with It. By an 
old maid." 

A magazine by this name was commenced in 
London many years ago, but it did not succeed. 

Agnes Strickland and Lucy Aiken were both ex- 
cellent historians. That trio of sweet singers, Ade- 
laide Procter, Jean Ingelow^ and Christina Rosetti 
can only be named. And that other remarkable trio, 
the Bronte sisters, for Charlotte won her fame as 
a spinster, who on the lonely Yorkshire heath, in 
their gloomy home, wrote so wonderfully of the 
outside world and of human nature. 

Eliza Cook (i 8 17- 1889), the editor of the popular 
journal bearing her name, has seated herself com- 
fortably on the hill of fame in her " Old Arm 
Chair." 

Miss Mulock and Miss Thackeray slipped quietly 
out of the ranks, both married happily to men much 
younger than themselves. Miss Mulock wrote be- 
fore she became Mrs. Craik : 

" My worldly name the world speaks loud, 
Thank God for well-earned fame; 
But silence sits at my cold hearth, 
I have no household name." 

Frances Power Cobbe, a woman whose influence 
is felt through England and in this country, an inde- 
pendent, warm-hearted, clear-headed author of a 
score of valuable books, full of liberal, earnest, 
original thought. She deserves a special chapter as 



Spinster Authors of England 57 

does Jean Ingelow and Frances Ridley Havergal. 
There are so many more that I stop, and will group 
these latter-day spinsters in a separate essay. 

The longevity of unmarried literary women is 
remarkable. Average age, eighty-one. 

Reviewing this throng renowned for their at- 
tractiveness in various ways, who can help wonder- 
ing at their unmated condition. 

" Alas, nor chariot nor barouche, 
Nor bandit cavalcade, 
Tore from the trembling father's arms 
Their all- accomplished maids." 

For them how happy had it been ! 

Literary woman are accused of being eccentric 
and ugly, but the majority of these woman were 
beautiful. Some hag once said that every woman 
who wrote had one eye on her paper, the other on 
some man ; — except the Baroness Hahn Hahn, and 
she had lost one eye ! 

Dorothy Pattison, " Sister Dora," the heroic 
hospital nurse, said she believed the true sphere for 
woman was home, after all, and toward the end of 
her life, remarked: "If I had to begin life over 
again, I would marry, because a woman ought to live 
with a man, and be in subjection." 

Dorothea Dix always advised young girls to 
marry rather than seek a career. The irony of fate 
or " Sarcasm of Destiny" or the Hand of Providence 
sometimes directs a woman's life very differently 



58 Spinster Authors of England 

from her own ideal. She may be lovable, affection- 
ate, fond of home, devoted to children, yet be denied 
all. 

" The needs God gave us disallowed ; 
Our unkissed faces in a shroud — 
Tis this to be a woman." 

Derision and neglect used to be added to this 
discipline. But the world is more tolerant, en- 
lightened, and kindly, and the old maid is now al- 
lowed to do what she can to make others happy, and 
no position of usefulness or distinction is closed to her 
if she has the power to fill it. Gail Hamilton says 
frankly and truly that every woman would marry if 
she got a chance, meaning thereby the right chance. 

Some of these spinsters who have been so brave 
and cheerful, and accomplished so much, have 
doubtless felt what Mrs. Browning has expressed so 
perfectly in Aurora Leigh : 

" My father ! thou hast knowledge, only Thou, 
How dreary 'tis for woman to sit still 
On winter nights by solitary fires, 
And hear the nations praising them far off, 
Too far ! Ay, praising our quick sense of love. 
Our very heart of passionate womanhood, 
Which could not beat so in the verse without 
Being present also in the unkissed lips 
And eyes, undried, because there's none to ask 
The reason they grew moist. 

To have our books 

Appraised by love, associated with love. 
While we sit loveless. Is it hard, you think ? 
At least 'tis mournful. 

The love of all 



Spinster Authors of England 59 

Is but a small thing to the love of one. 

You bid a hungry child be satisfied 

With a heritage of many corn-fields ; nay, 

He says he's hungry ; he would rather have 

That little barley cake you keep from him 

While reckoning up his harvests. So with us 

We're hungry. 

But since we needs must hunger, 

Better for man's love 
Than God's truth ! Better for companions sweet 
Than great convictions. Let us bear our weights, 
Preferring dreary hearths to desert souls." 

This quotation has roused severe criticism. One 
spinster, whose own career has been both brilliant 
and useful, exclaims : "It is too bad ! You depict 
these woman as talented, attractive, admired, lovely 
characters, and making lots of money. Then all is 
spoiled by this doleful picture of pining and sighing 
by a dreary hearth." 

I add, in deference to such appeals, that if some 
old maids are lonely, there are plenty of wives who 
would like to be ! 

Josiah Allen's wife has similar opinions of matri- 
mony: 

" Good land ! " says I. " Is marryin' the only 
theme anybody can lay holt of ? It seems to me that 
the best way would be to lay holt of duty now, and 
then, if a bo comes, lay holt of him. But not get 
married ! 

" Oh dear me, suz ! " screamed Delila Ann, for 
truly the thoughts seemed to scare her to death. 
" O how awful ! How lonely, lonely, they must be ! " 



60 Spinster Authors of England. 

"Who said they wasn't? " says I in pretty middlin' 
short tones, for she was a beginnin' to wear me out 
some, but I continued on in more mild accents. " I 
have seen married folks before now that I knew was 
in their souls as lonesome as dogs, and lonesomer " 
says I. "A disagreeabler feeling I never had than 
to have company that haint company stay right by 
you for two or three days. And then what must it 
be to have 'em stand by you from forty to fifty years I 
Good land ! it would tucker anybody out ! " 



I am weary of this old bachelor life. It is a dog's life — no, 
not a dog's ; that is a reflection on canine sagacity ; it is a log's 
life, if life that may be called, which life is none. — Pres. Raymona 
of Vassar College. 

What do you know by any possibility about women ? You, 
who are bachelor, bachelorum? I tell you, sir, that until you marry, 
you are in utter darkness and desolation. — Black. 



BACHELOR AUTHORS IN TYPES 



This is a hard subject to manage, as bachelors 
■u.sually are. 

The Spinsters of literature placidly took the 
places assigned them, their pure, unselfish lives ar- 
ranged themselves easily in accordance with my 
plan, shedding a perfume of self-abnegation and 
charitable deeds over the page. 

But bachelors in literature, as in life, are fascinat- 
ing, evasive, and inscrutable. 

Then, there is such a numerous throng, that, like 
the Fisher in the " Arabian Nights," gazing at the 
Genii he had released from the bottle, it seems al- 
most impossible to capture and confine so much in 
so small compass. 

Any one of these distinguished men would fur- 
nish abundant material for a volume, their combined 
works the reading of a lifetime, and I can almost see 



62 Bachelor Authors in Types 

their smiles and their sneers, at the idea of being 
massed together in this daring, irreverent way by a 
woman ! 

To play the critic to these mental monarchs in 
a brief review would be an impertinence. 

As the old broker remarked : " What we want is 
pints,'' bits of heart history, pen photographs, and 
now and then a quotation or anecdote that reveals 
character. 

Still: if these sketches seem odd, unconnected, 
and a trifle bald, they will be truer to the theme. 
Without going back to the days of Homer, Virgil, 
Horace, and Juvenal, or dilating on the literary 
achievements of the Roman Catholic Clergy (though 
sorry to omit Father Prout), the mind recalls an il- 
lustrious company. 

Tasso, Ariosto, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Congreve, 
Erasmus, Scaliger, Herrick, Goldsmith, Gray, 
Thomson, Collins, Cowley, Marlowe, Pope (the in- 
terrogation point of English literature, so called by 
an author he had quizzed too closely, " a little 
crooked thing that asks questions"). Pollock, his 
friend hoped he would marry in " the course of 
time." Cowper, Akenside (his were pleasures of 
the imagination), Hume, Gibbon, Macaulay, Gay, re- 
membered by the Beggars' Opera and " Black-Eyed 
Susan." Rich was his manager, and 'twas said that 
" this opera made Rich gay, and Gay rich." Prior, 
Shenstone, and Collins, Rogers, Crabbe Robinson, 
that ereat talker of whom Rogers once said at break- 



Bachelor Authors in Types 63 

fast : " If you have anything to say, say it quickly, 
for Crabbe Robinson is coming." Sir Isaac Newton 
and another Isaac, the good Dr. Watts, who made the 
longest visit on record, a forty-years visit, and was 
so delightful a guest that Lady Abney said it was 
the shortest visit she ever had ; yet no lady ever 
seemed to be struck with " Watts and Select Hymn." 
Yet he had his romance. Few who have read Dr. 
Watts' hymn beginning 

" How vain are all things here below," 

are aware that it was composed just after his suit had 
been rejected by Miss Singer, afterwards the cele- 
brated Mrs. Rowe. The lady would have preferred 
the Doctor, but he was so slow in declaring his 
passion, that, tired of waiting, she had accepted Mr. 
Rowe, when the worthy divine at last made known 
his wishes. 

Cruden, of Concordance fame, charmed with Miss 
Abney 's wealth and virtues, determined to marry 
her. For months he annoyed her with calls, letters, 
petitions, memorials, and remonstrances ; when she 
left , home, he caused " praying-bills " to be dis- 
tributed in various places of worship requesting the 
prayers of ministers and congregations for her 
preservation and safe return, and afterwards further 
bills for said congregations to return thanks. Finding 
that these peculiar attentions did not produce the de- 
sired effect, he drew up a long paper which he called 
a " Declaration of War," in which he announced 



64 Bachelor Authors in Types 

that he should yet compass her surrender by " shoot- 
ing off great numbers of bullets from his camp, 
namely, by earnest prayer to Heaven day and night, 
that her mind might be enlightened and her heart 
softened." But the young lady never relented, and 
this grotesque courtship ended in defeat. 

Herder, Hobbes (I jot down the names as they 
come to me), Grimm, the German Philologist, to 
whom the children are indebted for those wondrous 
stories, known as " Grimm's Tales." Frederick 
Grimm, the critic and diplomat; Voltaire, Alexander 
Humboldt, Hans Andersen, Neander, the German 
theologian, Jaffe, the Jewish historian of Popery, 
Bishops Butler, Hammond, and Leighton, Locke, 
Jeremy Bentham, Spinoza, Kant, Swedenborg, the 
mystic ; Dr. Barrow, who gave the best definition of 
wit yet known. 

Beranger, the lovable French lyrist. Rabelais, 
who, like Swift, concealed deep meaning and grave 
rebuke under coarse satire. Boileau, the satirist, 
whom Mad. Sevinge affirms was only cruel in his 
writings. He may be called the French Horace. 

St. Beuve, whom Matthew Arnold considered the 
finest critical spirit of our time. Burton, the author 
of the " Anatomy of Melancholy," and Matthew 
Green, who wrote " The Spleen." 

George Buchanan, tutor to James the VI, and 
James Buchanan, our bachelor president and some- 
thing of an author, publishing love verses in the 
New York Herald. His romance developed into a 
tragedy. 



Bachelor Authors in Types 65 

Captain John Smith, a sworn champion of the 
ladies, all of whom he admired too ardently to be 
guilty of the invidious offense of marrying any 
one of them'. Perhaps the last professional knight 
errant that the world ever saw. He was a prolific 
author and his " True Relation of Virginia " was the 
first book in American literature. 

By the way, what an interesting book could be 
written about the vSmiths who have distinguished 
themselves ! To another John Smith we owe the 
key to Pepy's Diary. 

If my subject included musicians, sculptors, 
artists, what a famous list could be added, as 
Raphael, Michael Angelo,* and Leonardo da Vinci, 
dear deaf old Sir Joshua Reynolds, Landseer, who, 
as some one well said " discovered the dog," Handel, 
Beethoven, Schubert, Berloiz. 

Handel was a hopeless bachelor. He was never 
in love and had an aversion to marriage. In 1707 
he went to Llibeck to compete for the place of suc- 
cessor to the famous organist Buxtehude ; but when 
he found that one of the conditions of obtaining the 
place was the compulsory privilege of marrying the 
daughter of his predecessor, not noted for her 
beauty, he fled precipitately. 

Of Beethoven it is said that he found more 
pleasure in the society of women than of men. He 
made up his mind repeatedly to get married, and 

* When IMichael Angelo was asked why he did not marry, he replied, 
" Painting is my wife and my works are my children." 



66 Bachelor Authors in Types 

proposed more than once, but was refused in each 
case. One of these women confessed that she 
rejected him because he was "so ugly, and half- 
cracked." 

Beethoven was enamored of the Countess Guic- 
ciardi, but she married another. He was often very 
lonely and once exclaimed, " O Providence, vouch- 
safe me one day of pure felicity ! " 

A touching romance was that of young Schubert. 
He was the teacher of Count Esterhazy's beautiful 
daughter and soon adored her, but the passion was 
not returned. " You have dedicated none of your 
works to me," she said. " What's the use," he sadly 
replied, "you already have all." Later he wrote: 
" Imagine a man whose health will never come 
again, whose brilliant hopes have come to naught — 
to whom the happiness of love and friendship offers 
nothing but sorrow. Every night when I go to 
sleep, I hope I may never wake again." His grave 
is near Beethoven. 

A learned physician, whose heart is as large as 
his practice, and knowledge of human nature as keen 
as his own scalpel, tells me it would not be possible 
to classify women.- You could not find two alike, 
nor predicate with certainty what any one of that 
capricious sex would do under given circumstances ; 
but men, as regards mental peculiarities, could be 
more easily arranged in bundles or types. 

*As Heine puts it: "Do you say that woman has no character ? 
She has a new character every day." 



Bachelor Authors in Types 67 

I shall therefore try to simplify matters, by classi- 
fying this interesting crowd of bachelor authors, 
naming a few representative men. 

And first, the Lady-killer, with Congreve, the 
dramatist, as a specimen. 

It is said that Congreve had too much wit in his 
comedies, not a prevailing fault now^-a-days, and 
Dryden pronounced his play, " The Old Bachelor," 
the best first play he had ever seen. Macaulay 
speaks of its dialogue as resplendent with wit and 
eloquence in such abundance that the fools come in 
for an ample share. He was attacked and nearly 
demolished by Jeremy Collier in his " Short View of 
the Stage." The poet spoke of " The Old Bachelor " 
as a trifle to which he attached no value, and which 
had become public by a sort of accident, " I wrote 
it," he said, '*to amuse myself in a slow recovery 
from a fit of sickness." 

" What his disease was," says Collier, " I am not 
able to inquire, but it must be a very ill one to be 
worse than the remedy." 

Congreve was handsome, witty, and a universal 
favorite. Ladies found him irresistible. His last 
admirer was the Duchess of Marlborough, daughter 
of the Dowager Duchess Sarah. 

Gouty and blind, he was charming to the last, 
and after his death her grace " had a statue of him 
in ivory, which moved by clockwork, and was placed 
daily at her table." She also had a large wax doll 
made in his likeness, and its feet were regularly 



68 Bachelor Authors in Types 

blistered and anointed by the doctors as poor Con- 
greve's had been. 

The inscription on his monument in Westminster 
Abbey was written by this appreciative friend, to 
whom he bequeathed his small fortune, which she 
wore round her neck in superb diamonds. Thack- 
eray dwells on Congreve in his Lectures on the 
Humorists. 

Swift might be ranked as a lady-killer in a 
serious way, but bachelors will not allow him in 
their ranks. 

As the greatest contrast, think of Cowper as a 
sensitive plant closing its delicate, shrinking petals, 
affected by every passing cloud, unable to endure 
contact with the rough-handed world. 

"O poets, from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless 

singing ! 
O Christians ! at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging ! 
O men ! this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling, 
Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while you were 

smiling. 
And now, what time ye all may read, through dimming tears his 

story ; 
How discord on the music fell and darkness on the glory. 
And how, when one by one sweet sounds and wandering lights 

departed. 
He wore no less a loving face because so broken-hearted." 

Cowper, at twenty-eight, became deeply attached 
to his cousin, Theodora, and she fully returned his 
affection ; was perhaps controlled by it through life, 
as she never married. But her father refused his 



Bachelor Authors in Types 69 

consent on the grounds of relationship and hered- 
itary insanity. Cowper writes to Lady Hesketh of 

" Her through tedious years of doubt and pain 
Fixed in her choice, and faithful, but in vain." 

Keats belongs to this class, shy, pure, sensitive, 
too delicately organized for health or lasting happi- 
ness. In one of his letters he hoped that after his 
death he ' ' would be among the English poets. ' ' With 
one or two exceptions, no poet of the last generation 
stands higher in the estimation of those fitted to 
judge. 

His letters to that disagreeable young woman, 
Fanny Brawne, must be mentioned. Another in- 
stance of " brawn and brain," where, as usual, 
Brawn gets the better of brain. His quivering, 
bleeding heart is laid open for inspection, a painful 
sight. 

There are the Embittered Bachelors, like Pope, 
who avenge their deformity and unhappiness or in- 
validism in satire, that, when applied to women, has 
neither delicacy nor genuine wit. Lady Montague's 
mocking laughter after his professions of passion 
must have hurt him. I can hear it now. 

Those governed by an Early Love like Irving. 
He was social, charming, enjoyed the society of 
ladies, was ever complimentary and courteous, some- 
times indulging in sentiment, yet we like to believe 
that his deepest love was buried in the grave of Ma- 
tilda Hoffman, of whom he said : " She died in the 



70 Bachelor Authors in Types 

beauty of youth, and to me she will always be young 
and beautiful." 

In a letter to Paulding, Irving writes: "Your pic- 
ture of domestic enjoyment indeed raises my envy. 
With all my wandering habits, which are the results 
of circumstances rather than of disposition, I think 
I was formed for an honest, domestic, uxorious man, 
and I cannot hear of my old cronies snugly nestled 
down with good wives and fine children round them, 
but I feel for the moment desolate and forlorn. 
Heavens ! what a haphazard, schemeless life mine 
has been that here I should be at this time of life, 
youth slipping away, and scribbling month after 
month and year after year, far from home, without 
any means or prospect of entering into matrimony, 
which I absolutely believe indispensable to the 
happiness and even comfort of the after part of 
existence." 

It was by the death-bed of his love that the well- 
beloved Dr. Muhlenberg wrote : " I would not live 
alway," and his devotion to her memory was unwaver- 
ing to the end. 

Gilbert White, the lovable, retiring old bachelor 
who gave us that delightful book, " The Natural 
History of Selbourne," making his name famous by 
an intelligent, enthusiastic, exact study of the birds 
and animals around his own home, belongs to this 
class. I think Miss Hetty Mulso rnade a mistake in 
refusing such a lover. 

In Mary Howitt's translation of the autobiog- 
raphy of Hans Andersen, we find that he had his 



Bachelor Authors in Types 71 

trials, but nothing could spoil the sunshiny, child- 
like nature of this best of story-tellers — a man of 
crystal innocence and amusing conceit. He gives 
the romance in his own ingenuous way. 

" Sentiment, which I had so often derided, would 
now be avenged. I arrived in the course of my 
journey at the house of a rich family, in a small city, 
and here, suddenly a new world opened before me, 
an immense world, which yet could be contained in 
four lines, which I wrote at that time : 

' A pair of dark eyes fixed my sight, 
They were my world, my home, and my delight. 
The soul beamed in them, and childlike peace, 
And never on earth will their memory cease.' 

New plans of life occupied me. I would give up 
writing poetry, to what would it lead? I would 
study theology and become a preacher. I had only 
one thought and that was she. But it was self- 
delusion. She loved another ; she married him. It 
was not till several years later that I felt and acknowl- 
edged that it was best both for her and myself that 
things had fallen out as they were. She had no idea, 
perhaps, how deep my feeling for her had been, or 
what an influence it produced in me. She had be- 
come the excellent wife of a good man, and a happy 
mother. God's blessing rest on her." 

It was in the company of Thorwaldsen, the sculp- 
tor (a bachelor, also) that Andersen wrote several of 
his stories. He says, that often in the twilight, when 
the family circle sat in the open garden parlor, 



72 Bachelor Authors in Types 

Thorwaldsen would come softly behind nie, and, 
clapping me on the shoulder, would ask, " Shall we 
little ones have any tales to-night? " Often during 
his most glorious works would he stand with laugh- 
ing countenance and listen to the story of " The Top 
and Ball," " Xhe Ugly Duckling." It is sad to think 
that one who had ftiade Christmas merry for so 
many little folks should ever be solitary on that day. 
He tells the story in his artless, touching way : " And 
yet, amid these social festivities, with all the amiable 
zeal and interest that there was felt for me, I had one 
disengaged evening, one evening on which I felt 
solitude in its most oppressive form — Christmas eve, 
that very evening of all others, in which I would 
most willingly witness something festal, willingly 
stand beside a Christmas tree, gladdening myself 
with the joy of children, and seeing the parents joy- 
fully become children again. Every one of the 
many families in which I, in truth, felt that I was 
received as a relation, had fancied, as I afterwards 
discovered, that I must be invited out, but I sat quite 
alone in my room at the inn, and thought on home. 
I seated myself at the open window and gazed up to 
the starry heavens which was the Christmas tree 
lighted up for me. ' Father in Heaven,' I prayed as 
the children do, ' what dost Thou give to me ? ' " It 
was he who said, " Every man's life is a fairy tale, 
written by God's finger." His own fairy tales have 
been read with delight in every modern language, 
Do you recall his epitaph ? 



Bachelor Authors in Types 73 

" Thou art not dead though thine eyes are closed ; 
In children's hearts thou shalt live forever." 

Hans Andersen is the only literary bachelor I 
remember who received and refused an offer of mar- 
riage. You can imagine his surprise on being told 
by a young and handsome girl, who had traveled far 
to meet him, that she wished to marry him. " I 
should be so very good to you," said the admiring, 
simple-hearted maiden, " and always take good care 
of you." " But, my dear girl, I don't wish to be mar- 
ried," answered the charming old man, and she de- 
parted as suddenly as she came. 

Turner, the artist, had his life shaped and shad- 
owed by an early diappointment. " A boyish fancy 
ripened into love, but his idol was influenced to 
marry in his absence, and the treachery wrought 
incalculable harm on his sensitive nature. He grad- 
ually changed into a self-concentrated, reserved 
money-maker." The very peculiar appearance of 
his " Slave Ship " may be due to this misfortune. 
Emotional insanity on canvas. I have always liked 
the story of the farmer's wife whose city cousin took 
her to see a collection of paintings in London. She 
looked at Turner's " The Day after the Deluge " and 
read the title. " Well, I should think it was ! " she 
said, and passed on. Something serious also seems 
to affect his literary work. 

Turner is not generally known as an author, yet 
he has written a good deal, so faulty in spelling, 



74 Bachelor Authors in Types 

grammar, and construction, that it would serve as an 
exercise for little boys at school to correct. 

Hamerton says he never did anything worse than 
his poetry, except his prose. You shall judge of 
their respective merits from brief extracts. 

" Where the soft river, flowing, gives renown, 
'Mid steep worn hills, and to the low sunk town ; 
"Whose trade has flourished from early time 
Remarkable for tiiread called Bridport twine." 

Now for the prose : 

" They wrong virtue, enduring difficulties or worth, 
in the bare imitation of nature, all offers received in 
the same brain, but where these attempts arise above 
mediocrity, it would surely not be a little sacrifice to 
those who perceive the value of the success, to foster 
it by terms so cordial that cannot look so easy a way 
as those spoken of convey doubts to the expecting 
individual. For as the line that unites the beautiful 
to grace and these offering forming a new style not 
that soul can guess as ethics. Teach them of both, 
but many serve as the body the soul, but presume 
more as the beacon to the headland which would be 
a warning to the danger of mannerism and the dis- 
gustful." 

(I trust this is clear to you !) 

Adam Smith, the distinguished writer on Political 
Economy, was never married. Dugald Stewart gives 
this interesting bit of history : 

" In the early part of Mr. Smith's life, it is well 
known to his friends that he was for several years 



Bachelor Authors in Types 75 

attached to a young- lady of great beauty and accom- 
plishment. What prevented their union I am not 
able to learn, but I believe it is pretty certain that 
after this disappointment, he laid aside all thoughts 
of marriage. The lady also died unmarried. At 
eighty she still retained evident traces of her former 
beauty. The powers of her understanding and the 
gaiety of her temper seemed to have suffered noth- 
ing from the hands of Time." 

The Hermit, as Thoreau — " The Bachelor of 
Thought and Nature." Thoreau was a recluse, a gen- 
uine apostle of solitude, standing aloof from other 
men and scorning them. 

" They do a little business each day to pay their 
board ; then they congregate in sitting rooms and 
feebly fabulate and paddle in the social slush. 

" The whole enterprise of this nation is totally de- 
void of interest to me. Would I not rather be a cedar 
post than the farmer that sets it, or he that preaches 
to that farmer ? 

" I could do easily without the post-office ; never 
read any memorable news in a newspaper. Nothing 
at the North Pole that I could not find at Concord. 

" What a foul subject is this of doing good instead 
of minding one's own life, which should be his ' busi- 
ness.' 

" The youth gets together the materials to build a 
bridge to the moon, or a temple on the earth, and 
the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed 
with them." ... 



76 Bachelor Authors in Types 

On picking- up a button from the coat of the 
drowned Marquis of Ossoli on the seashore, Thoreau 
reached the acme of self-aggrandizement. " Held 
up, it intercepts the light, an actual button, and yet 
all the life it is connected with is less substantial to 
me and interests me less than my faintest dream." 

He also said : " The stars and I belong to a mutual 
admiration society. I would put forth sublime 
thoughts daily. 

" I love my friends very much, but I find that it is 
of no use to go to see them. 

" I hate them commonly when I am near them ; 
they belie themselves and deny me continually. 
Silence alone is worthy to be heard." 

" ' I love Henry,' said a friend, 'but I cannot like 
him, and as for taking his arm, I should as soon think 
of taking the arm of an elm tree." Still Thoreau had a 
love affair, and the heroine is now a grandmother. 
He and his brother John made love to the same 
nymph, and she went and married a parson. 

To the average observer, a hut by a pond, and 
intimacies with mice and woodchucks, are even less 
desirable than " social slush." After all his outdoor 
excursions and a life in fresh air, Thoreau died of 
consumption like any common mortal who had been 
of more use to mankind. 

Do not say that I fail to appreciate the peculiar 
charm of this student of nature. " No one ever came 
nearer to the great heart of nature." What are 
guesses with others are a revelation to him. But he 



Bachelor Authors in Types ^^ 

affected to despise humanity, always a mistake. Men 
and women as a rule are more interesting than chip- 
munks. All this was caused by his intense S3'mpa- 
thy with nature. 

" It appears to me," sa^ this fascinating dreamer, 
" that to one standing on the heights of philosophy 
mankind and the works of man will have sunk out of 
sight altogether ; that man is altogether too much 
insisted on. Man is too much with us. It is our 
weakness that so exaggerates the virtue of philan- 
thropy and charity, and makes it the highest human 
attribute. The world will sooner or later tire of phi- 
lanthropy and all religion based on it mainly. In 
order to avoid delusions, I would fain let man go by, 
and behold a universe in which man is but a grain 
of sand." 

He may have inherited his self-consciousness from 
his mother, who when heard it she remarked that 
Thoreau's style resembled Emerson's, replied 
placidly : " Yes, Mr. Emerson docs write like my 
son." Lowell, who does not believe in Thoreau's 
originality, nor his arrogant omniscience about 
nature, says : " He turns commonplaces end for end, 
and fancies it makes something new of them. He 
discovered nothing, but thought everything a dis- 
covery of his own, from inoonlight to the planting of 
acorns and nuts by squirrels." 

The Self-denying bachelor, like Lamb, who gave 
up marriage for the sake of his sister. I am proud 
to say there are many equally noble in our day. 



78 Bachelor Authors in Types 

Lamb said of celibacy: "There is a quiet dignity in 
old bachelorhood, a leisure from cares, noise, and so 
on ; an enthronization upon the armed chair of a 
man's feeling, that he may sit, walk, ■ read unmo- 
lested ; to none accountab(|^." Writing to Procter on 
his marriage, Lamb said : " I am married myself to 
a severe step-wife, who keeps me, not at bed and 
board, but at desk and board, and is jealous of my 
morning aberrations. I cannot slip out to congratu- 
late kinder unions. It is well she leaves me alone 
o' nights ; the d d Day-hag Business." 

The Old-Maidish bachelor, like Gray, who always 
had his room in the most exact order, and a fire- 
escape at the window, who labored eight years on a 
single poem, and made it perfect. " No man ever 
went down to immortality with a smaller book under 
his arm." 

Erasmus was fanciful, and often old-maidish in 
his tastes. He must have a certain kind of fire- 
place, and a particular brand of wine. He almost 
fainted at the sight of fish, declaring that while his 
"heart was Catholic, his stomach was Lutheran." 

The late Francois Mignet, the French historian, 
was a confirmed old bachelor. A private passage was 
opened for him from his fourth-story lodgings into the 
house of Mr. Thiers, with whom he was on very in- 
timate terms. He retired at ten, rose at five, did his 
own cooking, allowed no one to touch his papers, 
and in winter sat and wrote with a rug around his 
legs and feet, rather than have the trouble of tend- 
ine the fire. 



Bachelor Authors in Types 79 

Walt Whitman stands by himself, " the good, gray 
poet " he is called by his admirers. I am not one of 
them. X do not find fault with his extraordinary 
ideas of " true art," refusing to expurgate his Leaves 
of Grass, although I cannot understand why we 
should excuse, tolerate, or admire in a book what 
would be tabooed as blasphemous or obscene in 
pictures or conversation. Why do women write of 
the rollicking vulgarity of Chaucer's tales as " de- 
licious natvete," and lady teachers advise the young 
girls under their guidance to read his description of 
intrigue, and hot, lawless, unbridled passion. It is 
not only unwise, but positively dangerous and 
wicked. Why not tell the truth about old Dan 
Chaucer? He spoils his own feast with needless 
filth. So does Rabelais. Gross indelicacy is not wit. 
Swift enjoyed revolting subjects that give a decent 
person a mental nausea. Many who have erred in 
this direction have realized the harm, and repented 
before death. But Walt Whitman sees nothing that 
is in the least objectionable in any of his poems. 
Let him represent the Egotist. 

" Divine am I inside and out and I make holy whatever I touch or 
am touched from. 

The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer." 

or 

" I do not snivel that snivel the world over." 

" I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones." 

" I dote on myself." 

" I am an acme of things accomplished." 

" My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs." 



80 Bachelor Authors in Types 

" My lovers suffocate me, 

Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses." 

" Let me have my own way; 
After me vista ! " 

" I bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the 
gifts of the universe." 

"Who thinks the amplest thoughts? for I would surround 
those thoughts." 

" Who has gone farthest? for I would go further." 

" To be conscious of my body, so satisfied, so large !" 

" To be this incredible God I am." 

His stringing together of nouns has been parodied 
so often and so well, that I will only give three of 
his own lines to prove that nothing can be more 
ridiculous : 

" Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade, 
Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable. 
Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition, 
house, library." 

Yet, once in a while you stumble on a striking 
and good sentence, as, " How beggarly appear argu- 
ments before a defiant deed ! " "I think heroic deeds 
were all conceived in the open air." His warble for 
Lilac-time I cheerfully acknowledge is exquisite, full 
of the very soul of spring. His love of nature is the 
redeeming quality. His Army Lyrics also have the 
true martial ring, and a deal of tenderness and 
pathos. 

And the Happy-go-lucky type, the blundering 
darling, whom every woman likes, but no woman 



Bachelor Authors in Types 81 

wants to marry; as poor " Goldy." He loved the 
beautiful Miss Horneck, the beautiful "Jessamy 
Bride," who was beautiful at seventy. After his 
coffin had been closed, a lock of hair was requested 
for a lady who wished to preserve it as a memento. 
She laughed at her awkward admirer while he lived, 
but his regard for her " has hung a poetical wreath 
above her grave." 

Says Irving : " Had it been his fate to meet a 
woman who could have loved him despite his faults 
and respected him despite his foibles, we cannot but 
think that his life and genius would have been made 
more harmonious, his desultory affections would 
have been concentrated, his craving self-love ap- 
peased, his pursuits more settled, his character more 
solid. A nature like Goldsmith's, so affectionate, so 
confiding, so susceptible to simple, innocent enjoy- 
ments, so dependent on others for the sunshine of 
existence, does not flower if deprived of the atmos- 
phere of home." 

Next, for contrast, a large family of clams, cold, 
encased in a hard shell. Hume takes the lead as a 
bivalve ; apathetic and frigid. In his essays, he fre- 
quently discusses the passion of love, dividing it into 
its elements as systematically as if he had subjected 
it to a chemical analysis, and laying down rules re- 
garding it as distinctly and specifically as if it were 
a system of logic. Hume's elder brother John was 
married in 1751, and the following letter full of 
light and elegant raillery refers to that event : 



82 Bachelor Authors in Types 

Dear Madam : 

Our friend has at last plucked up a resolution and has ventured 
on that dangerous encounter. He went off on Monday morning, 
and this is the first action of his life wherein he has engaged him- 
self without being able to compute exactly the consequences. But 
what arithmetic will serve to fix the proportion between good and 
bad wives, and rate the different classes of each. Sir Isaac New- 
ton himself, who could measure the course of the planets, and 
weigh the earth as in a pair of scales, even he had not algebra 
enough to reduce that amiable part of our species to a just equa- 
tion, and they are the only heavenly bodies whose orbits are as 
yet uncertain. 

It is recorded of Hume that he once made an 
offer of marriage to a lady who refused him, but 
whose friends afterwards told him that she had 
changed her mind. " So have I," replied the his- 
torian. At times he seems to be depressed by his 
self-imposed solitude, and spoke of himself as left 
utterly abandoned and desolate. " Fain would I run 
into the crowd for shelter and warmth, but cannot 
prevail with myself to mix with such deformity. I 
call upon others to join me in order to make a com- 
pany apart, but no one will hearken to me. Every- 
one keeps at a distance, and dreads that storm which 
beats upon me from every side." 

The Corpulent Bachelor Authors make a long list. 
Hume was one of the fattest of fat bachelors, and 
often alludes to it. In a letter he says, " Pray tell 
his solicitorship (Alexander Home) that I have been 
reading in an old author called Strabo, that in some 
cities of ancient Gaul there was a fixed legal stand- 
ard established for corpulency, that the senate kept 



Bachelor Authors in Types 83 

a measure, beyond which if any form presumed to 
increase, the proprietor was obliged to pay a fine 
proportionable to its rotundity. Ill would it fare 
with us if such a law should pass our parliament." 
Unappreciated in his own country, he was the rage 
in Paris. The incense of praise was enough to intox- 
icate even his cool head. But he could not shine in 
the society of ladies. In their salons he was an ex- 
quisitely comical failure. ]\Iad. D. Epinay gives a 
vivid scene. He is seated between the two prettiest 
women in Paris, but could only look admiringly, then 
blankly, from one to the other, absolutely unable to 
think of a word tg say. His French, indeed, was 
some excuse. " The French," said Walpole with his 
customary cynicism, " believe in Mr. Hume, the only 
thing in the world that they believe implicitly, for I 
defy them to understand any language which he 
speaks."* But Gibbon's corpulency placed him in 
an even more embarrassing position. 

It is generally imagined that Gibbon was faith- 
ful to his early and romantic love for Susan Curchod, 
afterwards Madam Necker, and the mother of Mad. 
de Stael. To be sure he never married, but one crit- 
ic's enthusiasm over his fidelity to this disappointed 
passion is a trifle excessive. He comments in this 
way on some extracts from his journal during the 
time of his courtship : " What raptures these sim- 
ple memoranda hint, and how dreary a void in his 
life is suggested by the historian's future recurrences 

*He made a similar criticism on Dante, saying, " His reputation will 
go on increasing, because scarcely anybody reads him." 



84 Bachelor Authors in Types 

to the sole passion of his life. He never loved nor 
thought of loving any other woman ; his hurt was 
not bravely received, but, apparently, it was incura- 
ble." When attributing to the man who grew, year 
by year, more famous and more enonnously fat, in 
the society of Madam Necker, such constancy, this 
writer should have mentioned, if only to refute it, a 
malicious story told concerning an occasion, when 
Gibbon, lured by the charms of a beautiful woman, 
not only forgot his loyalty to what is described as 
the sole love of his life, but, what was a matter of 
more importance to him, forgot that his fat had kept 
pace with his fame. It is averred that Gibbon, 
charmed with the beautiful Lady Elizabeth Foster, 
invited the fair one to breakfast in a bower fragrant 
with circling acacias, and read to her several pass- 
ages from his '' History of the Decline and Fall of 
the Roman Empire," just completed. Enchanted 
with the masterly narrative, her ladyship, wholly 
unsuspicious of all amorous pretensions from a man 
of his mature years, ungainly figure, and love-repel- 
ling countenance, complimented him with a charm of 
language and warmth of address which he instantly 
converted in effusions of tender inspiration. Falling 
on his knees, he gave utterance to an impassioned 
profession of love, greatly to the surprise of its ob- 
ject, who, recoiling, entreated him to rise at once 
from this humiliating posture. Thus recalled to 
cooler feeling, but prostrate and helpless from his 
unwieldly form, he vainly sought to regain his feet. 



Bachelor Authors in Types 85 

and the lady, whose first astonishment soon yielded 
to irrepressible laughter, was equally powerless in 
affording relief, until, at length, with the aid of two 
strong women, he was reseated in his arm-chair, from 
which it was supposed he had accidentally slipped. 
But this reversal of his " Decline and Fall " (I refer to 
his fall and her decline) did not interrupt their friend- 
ship, which shows him in a much more amiable light 
than Pope with Lady Montague. 

This absurd tableau has also been laughed over in 
France with Mad. de Cronza as the heroine. 

Thomson, the poet of the Natural School, after 
the brilliant finish of Pope's studied couplets was 
also noticeably corpulent. " More fat than bard he 
seems." Famous for his lays and his laziness, bit- 
ing mouthf uls from the luscious peaches hanging on 
the garden wall, too lazy to take his hands out of his 
pockets to pick them. He loved to lie in bed. He 
refused entirely to get up one morning in 1748, and 
after a proper period had elapsed they buried him. 
He had at least one romance, an unfortunate affair, 
being deeply interested in a Miss Amanda Some- 
body, whose mother did not want a poor poet for a 
son-in-law. 

He exclaimed : 

" For once, O Fortune, hear my prayer, 
And I absolve thy future care ; 
All other blessings I resign , 
Make but the dear Amanda mine." 

Poor Jemmy ! He sung of the seasons but had 
no summer of his own. 



86 Bachelor Authors in Types 

" 'Tis mine, alas ! to mourn my wretched fate, 
I love a maid who all my bosom charms. 
Yet lose my days, without this lovely mate, 
Inhuman fortune* keeps her from my arms." 

And next " The Cadaverous Skeleton," as Rogers, 
extremely sensitive about liis appearance, but his 
friends were unmerciful. Byron wrote a scathing 
lampoon, ending : 

' ' Is't a corpse stuck up for show ? 
Galvanized at times to go ! 
Vampire, ghost, or ghoul, what is it? 
I would walk ten miles to miss it ! " 

Sydney Smith named him " The Death Dandy," 
and wicked Theodore Hook advised him to call his 
hearse instead of his carriage. Even the cabby, 
whom he hailed at midnight from St. Paul's church- 
yard, knew too much to desire a ghost as passenger, 
and cried out, as he drove rapidly on, " Go back ! 
go back to your grave, old man ! " 

He was handsome in youth, but at ninety-four 
one might be pardoned for looking slightly shriv- 
eled. 

Jack Bannister maintained that more good things 
had been said and written on Rogers' face than on 
that of the greatest beauty. 

When Rogers repeated the couplet — 

"The robin with his furtive glance. 
Comes and looks at me askance." 

* In the shape of Amanda's mother. 



Bachelor Authors in Types ^7 

Ward struck in with 

" If it had been a carrion crow he would have 
looked you full in the face ! ' ' 

One wag insisted that he had been once shut up 
in the Catacombs, mistaken for a mummy ! And 
they said of his picture, a faithful likeness, that it 
was " painted to the death ! " 

Byron placed Rogers next to Scott as a poet. 
He had a decided talent for epigrams, and his table 
talk is delightful. A friend remarked, " If you 
enter his house, his drawing-room, his library, you 
of yourself say, ' This is not the dwelling of a com- 
mon mind.' There is not a gem, a coin, a book 
thrown aside on his chimney-piece, his sofa, his 
table that does not bespeak an almost fastidious 
elegance. But this very delicacy must be the mis- 
ery of his existence. He was reputed a wit, as well 
as poet, and did say some good things and many 
severe ones. Going to Holland House by the Ham- 
mersmith stage-coach, a lumbering old tortoise of a 
vehicle, he asked the driver what he called it. 
Being answered "The Regulator," he observed "it 
was a very proper name, as all the others ^c* by itT 

" When Croker wrote his review in the Quarterly 
of Macaulay's ' History,' he intended murder, but 
committed suicide." 

On somebody remarking that Payne Knight had 
become very deaf^ — " 'Tis from want of practice," 
replied Rogers ; " he is the worst listener I know." 

Rogers' breakfasts were even better than his 
poems. 



88 Bachelor Authors in Types 

He might also be classed as "an opulent catch, 
who wouldn't be caught." 

His epigram on Ward, Lord Dudley, is excellent : 

" Ward has no heart, they say, but I deny it. 
He has a heart and gets his speeches by it." 

Byron pronounced this to be one of the best epi- 
grams in the English language, with the true Greek 
talent of expressing by implication what is wished 
to be conveyed. 

Miss Sedgwick, who breakfasted with Rogers 
and called him the " king of old bachelors," said 
that he pronounced matrimony a folly at any period 
of life, and quoted the saying of some one that, " No 
matter whom you married, you would find after- 
wards you had married another person ! " 

Yet Hayward, in a recent essay in the Edinburgh, 
tells us that during the last four or five years of 
Rogers' life he was constantly expatiating on the 
advantages of marriage, and regretting he had not 
married, because then he should have had a nice 
woman to care for him. 

His own version of his nearest approximation to 
the nuptial tie was, that when a young man, he 
admired and sedulously sought the society of the 
most beautiful girl he then, and still thought, he had 
ever seen. At the end of the London season, at a 
ball, she said : " I am going to-morrow to Worthing. 
Are you coming there?" He did not go. Some 
months afterwards, being at Ranelagh, he saw the 



Bachelor Authors in Types 89 

attention of everyone drawn towards a large party, 
in the center of which was a lady on the arm of her 
husband. Stepping- forward to see this wonderful 
beauty, he found it was his love. 

She merely said : 

" You never came to Worthing." 

Voltaire was remarkable for his attenuated figure 
and'thin face. "Wicked Mummy" was one of his 
nicknames. He makes merry in his letters over the 
meagerness of his countenance, speaking of himself 
as " a dried herring," and once when he had said " I 
hope soon to see you face to face," he added, " that is 
if I may apply the word face to such a phiz as mine ? " 

He was once completely discomfitted by Young, 
author of the " Night Thoughts." Voltaire was de- 
preciating Paradise Lost, particularly disposed to 
ridicule Milton's celebrated personifications of death, 
sin, and the devil. Young, who had a happy talent 
for impromptu wit, retorted : 

" Thou art so witty, profligate, and thin, 
Thou art at once, the devil, death, and sin." 

Many famous metaphysicians, philosophers, and 
scientists have been bachelors. Jeremy Bentham, 
Kant, Locke, Butler, Spinoza, Hobbes, Newton, Rob- 
ert Boyle, Humboldt, Buckle, Spencer, etc. In look- 
ing over the life of Isaac Newton to find some ro- 
mance, I only encountered such headings as " His- 
tory of Fluxions," "Lunar Theory," "Achromatic 
Telescopes," and lose courage to seek further. It is 



90 Bachelor Authors in Types 

reported that his friends, fearing he would be insane 
from such constant mental exertion, induced a beau- 
tiful lady to enter his study and sit beside him, hop- 
ing- her presence might divert him from his labors. 
He had his pipe in his mouth asnisual, and the only 
notice taken of the fair invader was to borrow her 
dainty finger to punch his pipe bowl. She declared 
she would not be used as a tobacco stopper, and so 
the affair ended, in smoke ! 

Bunsen, the celebrated German chemist, became 
so engrossed in an experiment on his wedding day 
as to entirely forget his waiting bride, who was car- 
ried off by another. 

Humboldt was described by a woman who knew 
him well, as an atpiable, good-looking man ; a grace- 
ful dancer, devoted to the ladies ; a wit, a diplomat, 
and a philosopher, a great favorite in society. As he 
entered a drawing-room, a joyous exclamation was 
heard from all present, and as soon as the company 
were again seated, the hostess would exercise her 
privilege of starting conversation, by suggesting some 
topic to her distinguished guest. The theme need 
not be scientific ; it served the purpose equally well, 
if it were a bit of general news or town gossip. This 
intellectual giant could play with it as he pleased, 
and could turn and twist it in such a manner as to 
make it an opportunity for the display of wit, irony, 
wordly wisdom, memory, and versatile genius. He 
was a little feared for his witticisms. One young 
matron lingered at a reception until he departed, 



Bachelor Authors in Types 91 

saying, " I will never leave so long as that gentleman 
remains. I should not like to be the subject of his 
remarks I " (not so courageous as a friend of mine 
who was obliged to hurry away from a dinner for 
the opera, who said with a smiling bow to a witty 
French woman among the guests, who would always 
sacrifice a friend for an epigram : " Madam, I leave 
my reputation in your hands ! ") But there was no 
malevolence in Humboldt's character-sketches. Bis- 
marck, who disliked him, is reported as saying that 
he was a conceited, insupportable chatterer, and a 
disgusting glutton ! To offset this harsh estimate is 
Ingersoll's eloquent tribute : " We associate the name 
of Humboldt with oceans, continents, mountains, 
and volcanoes ; with the great palms, the wide des- 
erts, the snow-tipped craters of the Andes ; with pri- 
meval forests, and European capitals ; with wilder- 
nesses and universities ; with savages and savans ; 
with the lovely views of unpeopled wastes ; with 
peaks and pampas, and steppes, and cliffs, and crags. 
With the progress of the world ; with every science 
known to man ; with every star glittering in the 
immensity of space — the world is his monument ! " 
Here are a few unique statements from this 
inveterate bachelor : " I regard marriage as a sin. 
It is my conviction also that he is a fool, and still 
more a sinner, who takes upon himself the yoke of 
marriage ; a fool, because he thereby throws away 
his freedom, without gaining a corresponding recom- 
pense ; a sinner, because he gives life to children 



92 Bachelor Authors in Types 

without being able to give them the certainty of hap- 
piness. The whole of life is the greatest insanity." 

Buckle, who was always an invalid, declared that 
he owed everything to his mother, with whom he lived. 
After her death he said : " For the opinion of the 
world I care nothing, because, now at least, there is 
no one whose censure I fear, or whose praise I covet." 
In her society he found all the aid and sympathy he 
needed, and through her influence he was led to 
value the mental sympathy and companionship of 
women, with whom he was a great favorite. One of 
his finest discourses was on " The influence of woman 
on the progress of knowledge." 

A bachelor is apt to have his hobbies, his were 
books, chess, cigars, and "averages". He also de- 
clared he would not marry until he had ^5,000 a 3^ear, 
and never attained that comfortable income. 

The Pessimist, as " Schopenhauer, who did not 
wish to be loved by his fellow-men, for, in order to 
be loved by them, one must be like them, which, 
God forbid ! When the cat is a kitten, she plays 
with little paper balls; she imagines that they are 
alive and like herself. When she is old, she knows 
better, and lets them lie." 

Such had been his experience with the bipeds. 
He was a woman-hater, and gloried in his celibacy. 
" The so-called career of most young men," he said, 
" ends in their becoming beasts of burden to women. 
The married man bears the full burden of life ; the 
unmarried but half. All genuine philosophers have 



Bachelor Authors in Types 93 

been celibates — Descartes, Leibnitz, jSIalebranche, 
Spinoza, Kant. The ancients are not to be taken 
into account, because woman with them occupied a 
subordinate position. Moreover, Socrates' matri- 
monial experience did not recommend the nuptial 
state to scholars." 

Josiah Royce tells us of insanity in his family, 
and says, " the man, unquestionably, was incapable 
of a permanently cheerful view of life — a born out- 
cast, doomed to hide and be lonely." His mother 
did not enjoy his "rhetorically gloomy" letters. 
" Everything," he writes to her, " is washed away in 
time's stream. The minutes, the numberless atoms 
of pettiness into which every deed is dissolved, are 
the worms that gnaw at everything great and noble 
to destroy it." His mother found this sort of thing 
rather tedious. A most brilliant company often 
gathered at her house in Weimar, with Goethe at 
the head, and her son, a youth of twenty, could not 
add grace to such a scene so long as he could talk of 
nothing but time and worms. 

She wrote him plainly, being a woman as clear- 
headed as she was charming : " When you get older, 
dear Arthur, and see things more clearly, perhaps 
we shall agree better. Till then let us see that our 
thousand little quarrels do not hunt love out of our 
hearts. To that end we must keep well apart. You 
have your lodgings. As for my house, whenever 
you come you are a guest, and are welcome, of course, 
only you mustn't interfere. I can't bear objections. 



94 Bachelor Authors in Types 

Days when I receive, you may take supper with me 
if you'll only be so good as to refrain from your pain- 
ful disputations which make me angry, too, and from 
all your lamentations over the stupid world and the 
sorrows of mankind, for all that always gives me a 
bad night and horrid dreams, and I do so like sound 
sleep." 

How short-sighted are the students who insist 
that it is not necessary to know an author's history to 
understand his work. Schopenhauer, the morbid 
mystic, was simply a result of an unfortunate com- 
bination of inherited mental qualities. He could 
not help it ; he lived alone, he died alone. " His 
name is everywhere a symbol for all that is most 
dark and deep and sad and dangerous about the phi- 
losophy of our time." We pity him, and if we are 
wise, avoid his unhealthy influence. 

Cowley was spoken of in youth as the most ami- 
able of mankind, but, being ill-treated in a love affair 
in his latter days, could not afterwards endure the 
sight of a woman, and would leave the room if one 
came into it. 

James Smith of the famous " Rejected Addresses," 
was a bachelor. " I have had a horrid dream," he 
wrote in his diary, " namely, that I was engaged to 
be married ; introduced to my bride, a simpering, 
young woman, with flaxen hair, in white gloves, just 
going to declare off — coiite que coiUe — when, to my 
inexpressible relief, I awoke. 

It is noticeable that the best Letter-writers have 



Bachelor Authors in Types 95 

been bachelors — Erasmus, Walpole, Gray, Pope, 
Cowper, and Macaulay. They were not subjected to 
the domestic interruptions so comically described by 
Hood in his " Parental Ode," ending — 

" I'll tell you what, my love, 
I cannot write unless he's sent above." 

Erasmus was the most facetious man and the 
greatest critic of his age — a moderate reformer who 
satisfied neither side. He exposed with great free- 
dom the vices and corruptions of his own church, yet 
never would be persuaded to leave the communion. 
In his most remarkable work, "The Praise of Folly," 
he laughs at the faults and foibles of all classes and 
professions in a good-humored way. Open the book 
at random, you will find something to entertain you. 

In a gossipy letter to Faustus Andrelinus, poet- 
laureate of France, another bachelor author, Erasmus 
dwells with delight on a custom never to be suffi- 
ciently commended (saluting ladies with a kiss on 
meeting or leaving), saying : " Faustus, if you well 
knew the advantages of Britain, you would hasten 
hither with wings to your feet, and if your gout 
would not permit, you would wish you possessed the 
art of Dardalus." 

Erasmus left the bulk of his fortune as dowries 
for young maidens. 

Horace Walpole, who vSatirized for sixty years 
the men and women, manners and morals of his 
times in letters to friends, " loved letter writing and 
studied it as an art." Macaulay thinks " his letters 



96 Bachelor Authors in Types 

his best performances." Macaulay's " Essay on 
Walpole " is so brilliant, critical, and complete that 
all who are not familiar with it should enjoy it at 
once. 

Such racy, natural, spiteful pictures of life as 
Walpole loves to give are invaluable, and when 
mixed with brains they embody history. 

The letters were carefully prepared for publica- 
tion. Nothing else that he has written will live. 

In his old age he was devoted to the beautiful 
and talented Mary Berry, but, from fear of being 
laughed at by the world he had so mercilessly ridi- 
culed, assumed an equal interest in her sister, 
Agnes, who was comparatively commonplace, and 
did not dare to own himself a more than septua- 
genarian lover. His letters prove his deep and 
ardent attachment, and his fascinating friend de- 
served the title of Lady Orford. How much happier 
the rheumatic, lonely old fellow might have been ! 

Miss Martineau, who knew the Berrys, asserts in 
her positive way that he did offer himself to both. 
Impartial, certainly, but as there is no other refer- 
ence to this, it is safe to presume that her trumpet 
reported inaccurately, as was frequently the case. 
Irving compares such an elderly bachelor to an old 
moth, attempting to fly through a pane of glass 
towards a light, without ever approaching near 
enough to warm itself or scorch its wings ! 

Pope took great pains with his letters, and was so 
proud of them as to send duplicate copies to differ- 
ent ladies. 



Bachelor Authors in Types 97 

When women feel inclined to dislike " the Wasp 
of Twickenham " they should remember his fond 
reverential devotion to his mother. Dean Swift 
declared that he had not only never witnessed, but 
had never heard of anything like it. She lived to 
be ninety-three, and had been for some time in her 
dotage, but to him her death was a deadly wound. 

Pope was often atrociously abused before he 
stung his enemies, and is represented as warm- 
hearted and self-sacrificing by those who knew him 
best. 

The epigrammatic, quotable couplet was Pope's 

best mode • of expression. Regarding marriage he 

wrote : 

" Who would bear the dull unsocial hours, 
Spent by unmarried men, cheered by no smile. 
To sit like hermit at a lonely board, 
In silence." 

We think of Macaulay as a learned historian, a 
brilliant essayist, an extraordinary talker. " Poor 
Macaulay," said the roguish Sydney Smith, when 
both had been talking at the same time, " will be 
very sorry some day to have missed all this." He 
also alluded most wittily to Macaulay 's " flashes of 
silence," and some one accounts for his never mar- 
rying, on account of his passionate love for clever 
talk of his own. Brougham wrote of Macaulay as 
the greatest of bores in society. He said : " I have 
seen people come in from Holland house breathless 
and able to say nothing but ' Oh dear. Oh mercy ! ' 



98 Bachelor Authors in Types 

' What's the matter ? ' ' Oh Macaulay ! ' Then every- 
one said, ' That accounts for it. You're lucky to be 
alive.' " But read his life, more interesting than 
any novel, and see how his loving nature shines out 
in home life and in his letters to his idolized sisters. 

Macaulay, as a bachelor, is a mystery. When he 
loved, he loved more entirely and more exclusively 
than was well for himself. 

" It was improvident in him to concentrate such 
intensity of feeling upon relations, who, however 
deeply they were attached to him, could not always 
be in a position to requite him with the whole of 
their time and the whole of their heart. He suf- 
fered much for that improvidence. After the mar- 
riage of his sister Margaret, he never again recov- 
ered his tone of thorough boyishness," and he wrote : 

" I have still one more stake to lose. There 
remains one event for which, when it arrives, I shall, 
I hope, be prepared. From that moment, with a 
heart formed, if ever any man's heart was formed 
for domestic happiness, I shall have nothing left in 
this world but ambition. 

" After all, what am I more than my fathers ? 
Than the millions and tens of millions who have 
been weak enough to pay double price for some 
favorite number in the lottery of life, and who have 
suffered double disappointment when their ticket 
came up a blank. 

"I am sitting in the midst of two hundred friends, 
all mad with exultation and party spirit, all glorying 



Bachelor Authors in Types 99 

over the Tories, and thinking me the happiest man 
in the world. And it is all I can do to hide my tears 
and to command my voice when it is necessary for 
me to reply to their congratulations. Dearest, 
dearest sister, you alone are now left to me. Whom 
have I on earth but thee ? But for you, in the midst 
of all these successes, I should wish that I were lying 
by poor Hyde Villiers. But I cannot go on." 

At the close of his life, the prospect of a separa- 
tion from his sister Hannah, with whom he had 
lived in close and uninterrupted companionship 
since her childhood and his own early manhood, 
darkened his last hours. He endured it manfully, 
but his spirits never recovered the blow. 

" This prolonged parting — this slow sipping of 
the vinegar and the gall — is terrible. A month 
more of such days as I have been passing of late 
would make me impatient to get to my little nar- 
row crib, like a weary factory child." 

You see that now and then a literary bachelor's 
own confession proves his solitude and forlornity. 

Thomas HoUis, a devotee to literature and repub- 
licanism, who would not marry lest marriage should 
interrupt his labors, writes in his autobiography of 
his deep dejection, and cries out wearily that he has 
no one to advise, assist, or cherish him, that he 
goes nowhere for the pleasure of it, but as a used 
man, always laboring for others, with no sunshine or 
comfort for himself. 

Mark Akenside, who, " when he walked the 



100 Bachelor Authors in Types 

streets, looked for all the world like one of his own 
Alexandrines set upright," was an irritable, cross- 
grained bachelor, but this infirmity was excused as 
caused by two disappointments in love. He sighed 
for domestic comfort in this fashion : 

" Though the day have smoothly gone, 
Or to lettered leisure known , 
Or in social duty spent, 
Yet at eve, my lonely breast 
Seeks in vain for perfect rest, 
Languishes for true content. " 

It is said that he neglected the sick women in his 
visits to the hospital, so great was his antipathy to 
the sex ! 

One of our modern literary bachelors (James 
Whitcomb Riley) writes thus : 

BEREAVED. 

" Let me come in where you sit weeping — Aye, 
Let me, who have not any child to die, 
Weep with you for the little one whose love 
I have known nothing of. 

The little arms that slowlj', slowly loosed 
Their pressure round your neck ; — the hands you used 
To kiss. — Such arms — such hands I never knew. 
May I not weep with you? 

Fain would I be of service — say some thing, 
Between the tears, that would be comforting, — 
But ah ! so sadder than yourselves am I, 

Who have no child to die." 

The Bachelor Wit and Diner-out is another type, 



Bachelor Authors in Types 101 

like Theodore Hook, whom Coleridge pronounced to 
have had a genius equal to Dante, but sadly misused, 
and his life a miserable failure. Theodore, with his 
improvisations and practical jokes, deserves more 
space. 

Many bachelors might be mentioned of this type, 
their morals in an inverse ratio to their ability. Her- 
rick. Hook, Shenstone, and others, preferred the com- 
panionship of their servants to orthodox home life. 

Halleck, " the first poet-laureate of New York 
city," who modestly alluded to himself as but an 
amateur in the literary orchestra, posed as a bachelor, 
but was privately married and had two lovely daugh- 
ters said to have inherited much of their father's 
ability. He must have been extremely attractive, 
for a lady of position and culture said of him : " If I 
were on my way to church to be married — yes, even 
if I was walking up the aisle, and Halleck were to offer 
himself, I'd leave the man I had promised to marry 
and take him." 

His " Marco Bozarris " ran like wild-fire through 
the country. Rogers, who was fond of reading it to 
his guests, said : " It is better than anything we can 
do on this side of the Atlantic." " Fanny," his long- 
est poem, a pleasant satire on follies in fashions and 
politics, was immensely liked in its day. 

Bryant said of his poem on Burns, " I am not sure 
that these verses are not the finest in which one poet 
ever celebrated another. ' The lines 

" None knew thee but to love thee, 
None named thee but to praise," 



402 Bachelor Authors in Types 

which he wrote on the death of his literary partner, 
Drake, could well be used for himself. Here is an 
amusing letter he wrote to a friend on hearing of 
the approaching marriage of an old man : 

" My Dear Sir: 

" I am very glad, indeed, to learn from your kind letter of re- 
membrance, that there are sensible young women besides Mrs. 
Enoch (see Genesis v, 21) and the late Lady Leicester, who believe 
it takes sixty-five years to make a good husband. Mrs. Enoch 
became the mother of Methusalem, a millionaire in years, and 
Lady Leicester, the mother of five sons, each a multi-millionaire in 
money. May your marriage destiny be the long life of the one 
and the long purses of the other. For my own part, I still continue 
to fancy that Methusalem's resolution, not to marry until he was 
one hundred and eighty-one, was wise and prudent as a general 
rule. I am fast approaching that interesting period ; and, unless 
Mrs. Hackett, when I have the pleasure of conversing with her, 
shall by reference to her own pleasant example persuade me into 
an early marriage, I shall wait patiently another century for the 
happy day." 

The Jilted literary bachelors are numerous, from 
Jeremy Bentham to Chorley, but I regard them too 
highly to recall their lack of reciprocated affection. 

The Timid bachelor. I make this division, be- 
cause a bachelor assures me there are many unhappy 
men, who actually have not the courage to undertake 
the solemn responsibilities of matrimony, but that, if 
a lady would only take such a specimen kindly but 
firmly by the ear and lead him to the altar, he would 
go and be grateful. 

The Ideal bachelor. No need to give the name. 
Every heart prompts, every mouth utters the same — 



Bachelor Authors in Types 103 

simple-hearted, kindly, shy ; a " friend " in the truest 
sense, not only to the slave and the suffering, but to 
children, to the homely country life, and the simple 
wayside flowers of New England, to humanity ; whose 
breadth is seen in his creed rather than his hat-brim 
— the revered, beloved Whittier. Yet he often 
speaks regretfully of what he has lost in his single 
life. Here is a bit from a letter addressed to an old- 
time friend. 

" The years, that since we met have flown, 
Leave, as they found me, still alone. 
Nor wife, nor child, nor grandchild dear, 
Are mine, the heart to cheer. 
More favored thou; with hair less gray 
Than mine, can let thy fancy stray 
To where thy little Constance sees 
The prairie ripple in the breeze. 
For one like her to lisp thy name, 
Is better than the voice of fame. " 

Reference is made to his friend's grandchild, 
Constance. 

Lastly, the Irresistibles, I hear a wild commotion 
round me at this announcement, and find that almost 
every man I had otherwise placed is pushing into 
this division as his proper sphere. You see how 'tis. 
I can do nothing with them, after all. But there is 
woman's last refuge — I can still talk about them. 

To the conundrum, " Why are men of genius 
so often bachelors ? " it may be answered that 
such instances are not owing to anything like a 
want of appreciation of woman's worth or charms, 



104 Bachelor Authors in Types 

but to unfavorable circumstances. Most of these 
celebrated celibates have been deep in love, " I 
have seldom met with an old bachelor," said Irving, 
" who had not, at some time or other, some trait of 
romance in his life to which he looks back with 
fondness, and about which he is apt to grow garru- 
lous occasionally." 

It is self-evident that all bachelors remain unmar- 
ried from preference. They may not be able to win 
the one woman of their choice — biit there are always 
plenty more from which to make a selection. 

Dr. Holmes observes that even Lazarus could 
have married if he could have picked up crumbs 
enough to support a wife ! 

You remember that when a lady suggested a tax 
on bachelors, one of them promptly acquiesced, 
saying : " They ought to be taxed for freedom, as it 
was certainly a luxury. In the Annual Register of 
London, a serious proposition from the House of 
Commons is recorded, that all unmarried men over 
thirty-five should pay a special tax, and it has been 
proposed by Robert Dale Owen for our country. 
This law was carried into execution in Sparta, and in 
Athens there were persons whose business was 
matchmaking. In Prof. Felton's Greece, Ancient 
and Modern, a detailed account is given of this. 

I fear it would be difficult to collect a tax of 
this sort from bachelors of the present day, even 
a small yearly stipendum for the oakless vines, 
hanging in limp profusion all about them. The 



Bachelor Authors in Types 105 

Roman Censor, Metellus, appeals to bachelors in this 
way : " Fellow citizens, if we could live without 
wives, we should be free of this burden, but 
since nature has willed that it is as impossible to 
live without them as it is unpleasant to live with 
them, let us lay these disagreeablenesses of this 
short life as offerings on the altar of the state." 

I wonder that Cato's sentiments have not been 
blazoned on the banners of the agitators for 
Women's Rights. " Recall," he says, " all the ordi- 
ances of our forefathers, designed to keep women in 
subjection, and yet, ye could hardly keep them 
bridled. What shall be the result if ye give them 
freedom and the same rights which ye have your- 
selves. At the moment when they became your 
equals, they will become your superiors ! " 

Lord Bacon's dicta are familiar to all : 

" Certainly the best works and of greatest merit 
for the public have proceeded from the unmarried 
or childless men, who, both in affection and means, 
have married and endowed the public." 

The conjugal troubles of Shakespeare and Dry- 
den, Milton, Addison, Shelley, Bulwer, Byron, Dick- 
ens, with a score of lesser lights, may have alarmed 
some bachelor authors. As women are supposed to 
have personal reasons for disapproving of bachelors, 
please notice that I only quote the severe criticisms 
of other men. 

Dickens says of them : " Old bachelors are like 
those strange, wandering fires that seem to have no 



106 Bachelor Authors in Types 

fixed spheres, serve no known law in tlie moral uni- 
verse, the purpose of whose existence being a 
mystery to themselves and all about them. These 
singular specimens of humanity are in an anomalous 
condition, for they are not only isolated in their self- 
ishness, but they have also outlawed themselves 
from the rights and privileges of domestic life." 

In Thackeray's Pendennis you will find a touch- 
ing description of a bachelor's forlorn apartments, 
ending — " To be well in chambers is melancholy and 
lonely and selfish enough, but to be ill in chambers, 
to pass nights of pain and watchfulness, and long for 
the morning and the laundress, to have no other 
companion for long hours but your own sickening 
fancies and fevered thoughts, no kind hand to give 
you drink if you are thirsty, or to smooth the hot 
pillow that crumples under you, this indeed is a 
fate so desolate and tragic that we shall not enlarge 
upon its horror." 

Franklin compares a bachelor to a half-pair of 
scissors, and Beecher says : "A bachelor is like an 
old hemlock tree, dead at top, and ragged all the 
way down." 

For a farewell picture let me give from Praed, an 

old bachelor's violent protest against matrimony : 

" When the dim eyes shall gaze and fear 
To close the glance that lingers here , 
1 Watching the faint, departing light, 

That seems to flicker in its flight ; 
When the lone heart in that long strife 
Shall cling unconsciously to life; 



' Bachelor Authors in Types 107 

I'll have no shrieking female by 

To shed her drops of sympathy, 

To listen to each smothered throe, 

To feel or feign ofhcious woe, 

To bring me every useless cup, 

And beg, dear Tom, to drink it up ! 

To turn my oldest servants off. 

E'en as she hears my gurgling cough, 

And then expectingly to stand. 

And chafe my temples with her hand ; 

And pull a cleaner nightcap o'er 'em, 

That I may die with due decorum; 

And watch the while my ebbing breath. 

And count the tardy steps of death ; 

Grudging the Leech his growing skill , 

And wrapped in dreams about the will ; 

I'll have no furies round my bed, 

They shall not plague me till I'm dead. 

Believe me, ill my dust would rest, 
If the plain marble on my breast, 
That tells in letters large and clear, 
The bones of Thomas Quince lies here. 
Should add — a talisman of strife — 
Also, the bones of Jane, his wife !" 



LADY MORGAN. 



If the veritable Lady Morgan, with her wit and 
vanity, poor French and fine clothes, good common 
sense and warm Irish heart, could be with you this 
moment, she would be a most entertaining compan- 
ion. A spirited, versatile, spunky little woman, her 
whole life a grand social success, one of the most 
popular and voluminous writers of her day ; but, 
with all her sparkle and dash, ambition and industry, 
destined in a few generations more to be almost un- 
known, vanishing down that doleful " back entry " 
where Time sends so many bright men and women. 
As the founder of Irish fiction — for the national 
tales of Ireland begin with her — and the patron of 
Irish song (she stimulated Lover to write " Rory 
O'More," and " Kate Kearney " is her own), always 
laboring for liberty and the interests of her oppressed 
countrymen, and preserving her name absolutely 
untouched by scandal through a long and brilliant 
career, she deserves a place among distinguished 
women. She evidently had no idea of being forgot- 
ten, and completed twenty chapters of autobiography 
— its florid egotism at once its fault and its charm — 
besides keeping a diary in later years, and preserv- 
ing nearly all the letters written to her, from tributes 
of poets and exiles to the petitions of weavers and 



Lady Morgan 109 

chimney sweeps, and even cards left at her door. 
But on those cards were the names of Humboldt, 
Cuvier, Talma, and the most celebrated men of that 
epoch, down to Macaulay, Douglas Jerrold, and Ed- 
ward Everett, while she could count among her cor- 
respondents the noted men and women of three 
countries. La Fayette declared he was proud to be 
her friend ; Byron praised her writings, and always 
expressed regret that he had not made her acqaint- 
auce in Italy ; Sydney Smith coupled her name with 
his own as " the two Sydney s " ; Leigh Hunt cele- 
brated her in verse ; Sir Thomas Lawrence, Ary 
Scheffer, and other famous artists begged for the 
honor of painting her portrait. Was it strange after 
all this, and being told for half a century that she 
was an extraordinarily gifted and fascinating wo- 
man, that (being a woman) she should believe it ? 

She was extremely sensitive in regard to her age, 
and if forced to state it on the witness-stand would 
doubtless have whispered it to the judge in a be- 
witching way, as did a pretty but slightly passe 
French actress under similar embarrassing circum- 
stances. She pleads : " What has a woman to do 
with dates — cold, false, erroneous, chronological 
dates — new style, old style, precession of the equi- 
nox, ill-timed calculation of comets long since due 'at 
their station and never come ? Her poetical idiosyn- 
crasy, calculated by epochs, would make the most 
natural points of reference in woman's autobiogra- 
phy. Plutarch sets the example of dropping dates in 



110 Lady Morgan 

favor of incidents ; and an authority more appropri- 
ate, Madame de Genlis, wlio began her own memoirs 
at eighty, swept through nearly an age of incident 
and revolution without any reference to vulgar eras 
signifying nothing (the times themselves out of 
joint), testifying to the pleasant incidents she re- 
counts and the changes she witnessed. / mean to 
have none of them ! " 

Sydney Owenson was born in " ancient ould Dub- 
lin " at Christmas : the year is a little uncertain. 
The encyclopaedias say about 1780; 1776 has been 
suggested as more correct, but we will not pry into 
so delicate a matter. A charming woman never loses 
her youth. Doctor Holmes tells us that in traveling 
over the isthmus of life we do not ride in a private 
carriage, but in an omnibus — meaning that our an- 
cestors or their traits take the trip with us ; and in 
studying a character it is interesting to note the com- 
binations that from generations back make up the 
individual. Sydney's father was the child of an ill- 
assorted marriage. " At a hurling-match long ago, 
the Queen of Beauty, Sydney, granddaughter of Sir 
Maltby Crofton, lost her heart, like Rosalind, to the 
victor of the day, Walter McOwen (anglicised Owen- 
son), a young farmer, tall and handsome, graceful 
and daring, and allowed him to discover that he had 
' wrestled well and overthrown more than his ene- 
mies.' Result, an elopement and mesalliance never 
to be forgiven — the husband a jolly, racketing Irish 
lad, unable to appreciate his refined, accomplished 



Lady Morgan 111 

wife, a skillful performer on the Irish harp, a poet, 
and a genius, called by the admiring neighbors ' the 
Harp of the Valley.' " Their only child, the father 
of Lady Morgan, was a tolerable actor, of loose mor- 
als and tight purse, who could sing a good song or 
tell a good story, and who was always in debt. 

Sydney was a winsome little rogue, quite too much 
for her precise and stately mother, who was ever 
holding up as a model a child, in her grave fifty 
years agone, who had read the Bible through twice 
before she was five years old, and knitted all the 
stockings worn by the coachmen ! All in vain ; 
Sydney was not fated to die early or figure as a 
young saint in a Sunday-school memoir. She took a 
deep interest in chimney-sweeps from observing a 
den of little imps who swarmed in a cellar near her 
home, and on one occasion actually scrambled up a 
burning chimney, followed by this sooty troop. Her 
pets were numerous, the prime favorite being a cat 
named Ginger, from her yellow coat. Her mother, 
wdio was shocked by Sydney adding to her nightly 
,petition, " God bless Ginger the cat ! ""' did not share 
this partiality, as is seen in the young lady's first 
attempt at authorship : 



* Puzzling Theological Questions : 

" Why may I not say, bless Gmger ? " 

" Because Ginger is not a Christian." 

" Why isn't Ginger a Christian ? " 

" Because Ginger is only an animal." 

" Am I a Christian, mamma, or an animal? " 



112 Lady Morgan 

"My dear pussy cat, 
Were I a mouse or a rat, 

Sure I never would run off from you. 
You're so funny and gay 
With your tail when you play, 

And no song is so sweet as your mew. 
But pray keep in your press. 
And don't make a mess. 

When you share with your kittens our posset, 
For mamma can't abide you. 
And I cannot hide you 

Unless you keep close in your closet." 

Her voice was remarkable, but her father, know- 
ing too well the temptations that beset a public 
singer, refused to cultivate her talent for music, say- 
ing, " If I were to do this, it might induce her some 
day to go on the stage, and I would prefer to buy her 
a sieve of black cockles from Ring's End, to cry. 
about the streets of Dublin, to seeing her the first 
prima donna of Europe." A genuine talent for 
music will assert itself in spite of neglect, and one 
evening at the house of Moore, where, with her sister 
Olivia, she listened in tearful enthusiasm to some of 
his melodies, sung as only the poet could sing them, 
was an important event in her life. She tells us that 
after this treat they went home in almost delirious 
ecstacy, actually forgetting to undress themselves 
before going to bed. This experience developed a 
longing to know more of the early Irish ballads, and 
roused a literary ambition. If the grocer's son could 
so distinguish himself, she could surely relieve her 
dear father from his embarrassments ; and she began 



Lady Morgan II3 

at once to write with this noble object. Her unself- 
ish and unwavering devotion to her rather worthless 
father is the most attractive and touching point in 
her character. His watchful care was certainly cred- 
itable. Living in a town where soldiers were sta- 
tioned, he allowed them no acquaintance with his 
daughters. One of them said : "Owenson looks at us 
as if he'd like to pitch our entire mess-room of En- 
signs out of the window in an armfull." After her 
mother's death she was sent to boarding-school, 
where she studied well, scribbled verses, accom- 
plished herself in dancing, and furnished bright 
home-letters for her less brilliant mates. 

She next figures as a governess in the family of a 
Mrs. Featherstone of Bracklin Castle. There was a 
merry dance for adieu the night she was to leave, but, 
like Cinderella, she danced too long ; the hour 
sounded, and vSydney was hurried into the coach in a 
white muslin dress, pink silk stockings, and slippers 
of the same hue, while Molly, the faithful old ser- 
vant, insisted on wrapping her darling in her own 
warm cloak and ungainly headgear. Being ushered 
in this plight into a handsome drawing-room, there 
was a general titter at her grotesque appearance, but 
she told her story in her own captivating way until 
they screamed with laughter — not at her now, but 
with her — and she was carried off to an exquisite ' 
suite of rooms — a study, bedroom and bathroom, 
with a roaring turf fire, open piano, and lots of books, 
and after dinner, when she was toasted, she sang sev- 



114 Lady Morgan 

eral songs, which she said had an immense effect, 
and the evening ended with a jig, the host regretting 
they had no spectators besides the servants. This, 
her first jig out of the schooh^oom, she contrasts 
with her last one in public, when invited by the 
Duchess of Northumberland to dance with Lord 
George Hill. She accepted the challenge from the 
two best jig dancers in the country, Lord George 
and Sir Philip Crampton, and had the pleasure of 
flooring them both. Apropos of her fondness for 
jigs, in Fanny Kemble's Old Woman's Gossip, you 
will find an amusing reminiscence. 

She was a successful teacher, although she could 
not restrain her love of fun. Once, indeed, they 
threatened to write to her father, but were conquered 
by an evening of song. 

Her father's pride rose in revolt against her posi- 
tion. He wished to place her under the protection 
of some purse-proud cousins, but Sydney rebelled. 
She writes to dear papa : "A humble companion I 
will not be to any one. I could never walk out with 
little dogs or run little messages. AVhat objections 
can you have to my occupying the position of a 
teacher, a calling which enrolls the names of Madame 
de Maintenon and Madame de Genlis." And she kept 
her place and her self-respect. 

"St. Clair" was the name of her first novel. She 
had kept her work a profoun dsecret, and one morn- 
ing, full of ambitious dreams, she borrowed the cook's 
market bonnet and cloak and sallied out to seek her 



Lady Morgan 115 

fortune. Before going far she saw over a shop door 
" T. Smith, Printer and Bookseller," and ventured in. 
It was some minutes before T. Smith made his ap- 
pearance, and when he did come he had a razor in 
one hand, a towel in the other, and only one side of 
his face shaved. After hearing her errand, he told 
he did not publish novels, and sent her to Brown. 
Brown wanted his breakfast and was not anxious for 
a girl's manuscript, but his wife persuaded him to 
look it over, and, elated with success, Sydney ran 
home, forgetting to leave any address, and never 
heard of her first venture until, taking up a book in a 
friend's parlor, it proved to be her own ! It had a 
good sale and was translated into German, with a 
biographical notice, which stated that the young 
author had strangled herself with an embroidered 
handkerchief in an agony of despair and unrequited 
love. The " Sorrows of Werther " was her model, but 
with a deal of stuff and sentimentality there was the 
promise of better things. In all her early works her 
characters indulge in wonderful digressions ; histor- 
ical, astronomical, and metaphysical, in the midst of 
-terrible emergencies where danger, despair, and un- 
speakable catastrophes are imminent and impending. 
No matter what laceration of their finest feelings they 
may be suffering, they always have their learning at 
command and never fail to make quotations from 
favorite authors appropriate to the occasion. ("St. 
Elmo" resembles this.) 

The "Novice of St. Dominick " was Miss Owenson's 



116 Lady Morgan 

second novel, she going alone to London to arrange 
for its publication. It was no small undertaking, 
and when the coach drove into the yard of the Swan 
with Two Necks, the young lady was utterly ex- 
hausted, and, seating herself on her little trunk in the 
inn yard, fell fast asleep. But, as usual, she found 
friends and luck was on her side. The novel was 
cut from six volumes to four, and with her first liter- 
ary earnings, after assisting her father, she bought 
an Irish harp and a black mode cloak, always devoted 
to music and dress. 

Next came " The Wild Irish Girl," her first na- 
tional story, which gave her more than a national 
fame and ^300 from her fascinated publisher. It 
contains much curious information about the antiqui- 
ties and social condition of Ireland, and a passionate 
pleading against the wrongs of its people. It made 
the piquant little governess all the rage in fash- 
ionable society, and until her marriage she was 
known by the name of her heroine — Glorvina. As 
a story it is not worth reading to-day. In the " Book 
of the Boudoir," a sort of literary rag-bag, she gives 
under the heading " My First Rout in London," a 
graphic picture of an evening at Lady Cork's. She 
says : " A few days after my arrival in London and 
while my little book was running rapidly through 
successive editions, I was presented to the Countess- 
dowager of Cork, and invited to a reception at her 
fantastic and pretty mansion in New Burlington 
street. Oh, how her Irish historical name tingled in 



Lady Morgan 117 

my ears and seized on my imagination, reminding 
me of her great ancestor, ' the father of chemistry 
and uncle to the earl of Cork ' ! I stepped into my 
job carriage at the hour of ten, and, all alone by my- 
self, as the song says, ' to Eden took my solitary 
way.' What added to my fears and doubts and hopes 
and embarrassments was a note from my noble 
hostess received at the moment of departure : 
' Everybody has been invited expressly to meet the 
Wild Irish Girl ; so she must bring her Irish harp. 
M. C. O.' I arrived at New Burlington street with- 
out my harp and with a beating heart, and I heard 
the high-sounding titles of princes and ambassadors 
and dukes and duchesses announced, long before my 
poor plebeian name puzzled the porter and was ban- 
died from footman to footman. As I ascended the 
marble stairs with their gilt balustrade, I was agitated 
by emotions similar to those which drew from a 
frightened countryman his frank exclamation in the 
heat of the battle of Vittoria: ' Oh, jabbers! I wish 
some of my greatest enemies was kicking me down 
Dame street.' Lady Cork met me at the door: 
' What ! no harp, Glorvina?' — ' Oh, Lady Cork! ' — 
' oil. Lady Fiddlestick ! You are a fool, child : you 
don't know your own interests. — Here, James, Wil- 
liam, Thomas ! send one of the chairmen to Stan- 
hope street for Miss Owenson'^ harp.' " 

After a stand and a stare of some seconds at a 
strikingly sullen-looking, handsome creature who 
stood alone, and whom she heard addressed by a 



118 Lady Morgan 

pretty sprite of fashion with a " How-do, Lord 
Byron ? " she says : " I was pushed on, and on reach- 
ing- the centre of the conservatory, I found myself 
suddenly bounced upon a sort of rustic seat, a very 
uneasy pre-eminence, and there I sat, the lioness of 
the night, shown oif like the hyena of Exeter 
'Change, looking almost as wild and feeling quite as 
savage. Presenting me to each and all of the splen- 
did crowd which an idle curiosity, easily excited and 
as soon satisfied, had gathered round us, she prefaced 
every introduction with a little exordium which 
seemed to amuse every one but its object : ' Lord 
Erskine, this is the Wild Irish Girl whom you are 
so anxious to know. I assure you she talks quite as 
well as she writes. — Now, my dear, do tell my Lord 
Erskine some of those Irish stories you told us the 
other evening. Fancy yourself among your own set, 
and take off the brogue. Mrs. Abingdon says you 
would make a famous actress ; she does indeed. You 
must play the short-armed orator with her ; she will 
be here by and by. This is the duchess of St. 
Albans: she has your novel by heart. Where is 

Sheridan ? — Do. my dear Mr. T (This is Mr. 

T , my dear : geniuses should know each other) 

— do, my dear Mr. T , find me Mr. Sheridan. Oh ! 

here he is ! — What ! you know each other already ? 
So much the better.-^ This is Lord Carysford.— Mr. 
Lewis, do come forward. — That is Monk Lewis, my 
dear, of whom you have heard so much, but you 
must not read his works ; they are very naughty.' 



Lady Morgan 119 

Lewis, who stood staring at me through his eye- 
glasses, backed out after this remark, and disap- 
peared. ' You know Mr. Gell,' her ladyship contin- 
ued, ' so I need not introduce you ; he calls you the 
Irish Corinne. Your friend Mr. Moore will be here 
by and by ; I have collected all the talent for you. — 
Do see, somebody, if Mr. Kemble and Mrs. Siddons 
are come yet, and find me Lady Hamilton. — Noiv, 
pray tell us the scene at the Irish baronet's in the 
rebellion,' and then give us your blue-stocking dinner 
at Sir Richard Phillips. Here is Lord L. — he will 
be your bottle holder.' 

"Lord L volunteered his services. The circle 

now began to widen — wits, warriors, peers, and min- 
isters of state. The harp was brought forward, and 
I tried to sing, but my howl was funereal. I was 
ready to cry, but endeavored to laugh, and to cover 
my real timidity by an affected ease which was both 
awkward and impolitic. At last Mr. Kemble was 
announced. Lady CorK reproached him as the late 
Mr. Kemble, and then, looking significantly at me, 
told him who I was. Kemble acknowledged me by 
a kindly nod, but the stare which succeeded was not 
one of mere recognition ; it was the glazed, fixed 
look so common to those who have been making liba- 
tions to altars which rarely qualify them for ladies' 
society. Mr. Kemble was evidently much preoccu- 
pied and a little exalted. He was seated my vis-a-vis 
at supper, and repeatedly raised his arm and stretched 
it across the table for the purpose, as I supposed, of 



120 Lady Morgan 

helping himself to some boar's head in jelly. Alas ! 
no ! The bore was that my head happened to be the 
object which fixed his tenacious attention, which, 
dark, cropped and curly, struck him as a particularly 
well-organized ' Brutus,' and better than any in his 
repertoire of theatrical perukes. , Succeeding at last 
in his feline and fixed purpose, he actually stuck 
his claws in my locks, and, addressing me in the 
deepest sepulchral tones, asked, ' Little girl, where 
did you get your wig ? ' Lord Erskine came to the 
rescue and liberated my head, and all tried to re- 
trieve the awkwardness of the scene. Meanwhile, 
Kemble, peevish, as half -tipsy people generally are, 
drew back muttering and fumbling in his pocket, 
evidently with some dire intent loAvering in his eyes. 
To the amusement of all, and to my increased con- 
sternation, he drew forth a volume of the Wild Irish 
Girl, and reading with his deep, emphatic voice one 
of the most high-flown of its passages, he paused, 
and patting the page with his forefinger, with the 
look of Hamlet addressing Polonius, he said, ' Little 
girl, why did you write such nonsense ? and where 
did you get all those damned hard words ? ' Thus 
taken by surprise, and smarting with my wounds of 
mortified authorship, I answered, unwittingly and 
witlessly, the truth : ' Sir, I wrote as well as I could, 
and I got the hard words from — Johnson's Diction- 
ary.' He was soon carried off to prevent any more 
attacks on my head, inside or out." 

Lady Cork was a unique character, and her name 



Lady Morgan 121 

suggests several anecdotes. She entertained fre- 
quently, giving parties of various colors : pink for 
the exclusives, blue for the literary, gray for the 
religious, and her pet and protege suggested dun- 
dukettry mud color as a good name for a mixed 
crowd. 

On a pink evening, she wore such an enormous 
plume, that one of the wits present compared her to 
a shuttle-cock — all Cork and feathers. 

At a dinner where this eccentric dowager was 
the only lady present, she said to Colman, " You are 
so agreeable that you shall drink a glass of cham- 
pagne with me." 

" Your ladyship's wishes are law to me," said 
Colman, " but really, champagne does not agree with 
me ; " upon which, Jekyll called out, " Faith, Colman, 
you seem more attached to the cork than the bottle:" 

She was a person of extraordinary power for 
making herself comfortable, and did anything that 
it pleased her to do — would invite a number of 
guests to dinner at a friend's house before telling 
said friend of the pleasure in store for him, and 
would make use of a friend's carriage without asking 
permission. Once, on leaving a breakfast party, she 
claimed a carriage in this way ; told the footman 
that she took it by his mistress's orders ; kept it out 
the whole afternoon, and on meeting the owner ex- 
claimed, " I wish you would have the steps of your 
carriage lowered before I use it again." 

Sydney Smith said that she was once so much 



122 Lady Morgan 

affected by one of his charity sermons, that she bor- 
rowed a guinea from a friend to piit in the plate. 

Darwin tells us how once, when dining at Dean 
Milman's, Sydney said, " It is generally believed that 
my dear old friend. Lady Cork, has been overlooked," 
and he said this in such a manner that no one could, 
for a moment, doubt that his dear old friend had 
been overlooked by the Devil. 

Glorvina was now very much the fashion, visit- 
ing in the best Dublin society and making many 
friends, whom she had the tact to retain through life. 
When articles of dress or ornament are named for 
one, it is an unfailing sign that they have attained 
notoriety, if not fame, and the bodkin used for fas- 
tening the "back hair" was called "Glorvina" in her 
honor. Like many attractive women of decided 
character, she had her full share of faults and foibles. 
Superficial, conceited, sadly lacking in spirituality 
and refinement, a cruel enemy, a toady to titles, a 
blind partisan of the Liberal party, — that is her pic- 
ture in shadow. Her style was open to severe criti- 
cism, and Richard Lovell Edgeworth suggests mildly 
that Maria, in reading her novel aloud in the family 
circle, was obliged to omit some superfluous epithets. 

In this first flush of celebrity she never gave up 
work, holding fast to industry as her sheet-anchor. 
Soon appeared two volumes of patriotic tales. " Ida 
of Athens" was Novel No. 3, but written in confident 
haste, and not well received. The names of her 
books would make a list rivaling that of the loves of 



Lady Morgan 123 

Don Giovanni (nearly seventy volumes), and any ex- 
tended analysis or criticism would be impossible in 
this rapid sketch. " Every day in my life is a leaf in 
my book," was a motto literally carried out, and she 
tried almost every department of literature, succeed- 
ing best in describing the broad characteristics of her 
own nation. " Her lovers, like her books, were too 
numerous to mention," yet her own heart seemed 
untouched. She coquetted gayly, but her adorers 
were always the sufferers. 

Sir Jonah Barrington wrote her at this time a 
complimentary and witty letter, in which he says of 
her heroine Glorvina, " I believe you stole a spark 
from heaven to give animation to your idol." He 
thought the inferiority of " Ida " was owing to its au- 
thor's luxurious surroundings. " I cannot conceive 
why the brain should not get fat and unwieldy, as 
well as any other part of the human frame. Some 
of our best poets have written in paroxysms of hun- 
ger, and I really believe that Addison would have 
had more point if he had had less victuals ; and if 
you do not restrict yourself to a sheep's trotter and 
spruce beer, your style will betray your luxury." 
But soon came an increase of the very thing feared 
for her fame, in the form of an invitation from 
Lady Abercorn and the marquis to pass the chief 
part of every year with them. This was accepted, 
and thus she met her fate. Lord Abercorn kept a 
physician in his house, Doctor Morgan, a handsome, 
accomplished widower, whom the marchioness was 



124 Lady Morgan 

anxious to provide with a second wife. She had 
fixed upon Sydney as a suitable person, but the re- 
tiring and reticent doctor had heard so much of her 
wit, talents, and general fascination, that he disliked 
the idea of meeting her. He was sitting one morn- 
ing with the marchioness when a servant threw open 
the door, announcing " Miss Owenson," who had 
just arrived. Dr. Morgan sprang to his feet, and, 
there being no other way of escape, leaped through 
the open window into the garden below. This was 
too fair a challenge for a girl of spirit to refuse, and 
she set to work to captivate him, succeeding more 
effectually than she desired, for she had dreamed of 
making a brilliant match. Soon a letter was written 
to her father asking his leave to marry the conquered 
doctor, yet she does not seem to have been one bit 
in love. He was too grave and good, though as de- 
voted a lover as could be asked for. It was a queer 
match and a dangerous experiment, but after a while, 
their mutual qualities adjusted themselves. He 
kept her steady, and she roused him from indolent 
repose. As a critic of that time says : " She was as 
bustling, restless, energetic, and pushing as he was 
modest, retiring, and unaffected." Lover gives this 
picture of them : " There was Lady Morgan, with her 
irrepressible vivacity, her humor that indulged in 
the most audacious illustrations, and her candor 
which had small respect for time or place in its ex- 
pression, and who, by the side of her tranquil, steady, 
contemplative husband, suggested the notion of a 



Lady Morgan 125 

Barbary colt harnessed to a patient English draught- 
horse." 

She had a certain light, jaunty air peculiarly 
Irish, celebrated by Leigh Hunt in verses which em- 
body a faithful portrait : 

"And dear Lady Morgan, see, see where she comes, 
With her pulses all beating for freedom like drums, 
So Irish, so modish, so mixtish, so wild. 
So committing herself, as she talks, like a child ; 
So trim, yet so easy, polite, yet high-hearted, 
That Truth and she, try all she can, won't be parted. 
She'll put on your fashions, your latest new air, 
Aud then talk so frankly, she'll make you all stare. 
Mrs. Hall may say " Oh ! " and Miss Edgeworth say " Fie ! " 
But my lady will know the what and the why. 
Her books, a like mixture, are so very clever 
That Jove himself swore he could read them forever. 
Plot, character, freakishness, all are so good. 
And the heroine herself playing tricks in a hood." 

After a happy year with her patrons, Glorvina 
married and moved to a home of her own in Kildare 
street, Dublin, whence she writes to Lady Stanley : 
" With respect to authorship, I fear it is over. I 
have been making chair-covers instead of periods, 
hanging curtains instead of raising systems, and 
cheapening pots and pans instead of selling senti- 
ment and philosophy." But even during this first 
busy year of housekeeping she was working upon 
" O'Donnel," another national tale, for which she was 
paid five hundred and fifty pounds. It was highly 
praised by Sir Walter Scott, and sold with rapidity, 
but her liberal politics made her unpopular with the 



126 Lady Morgan 

leading Tory journalism of England. In point of 
pitiless invective the criticism of the Quarterly and 
Blackzvood has, perhaps, never been exceeded. Her 
books were denounced as pestilent, and the public 
advised against maintaining her acquaintance. Miss 
Martineau, an impartial critic, if impartiality con- 
sists in punching almost every one she passed, did 
not fail to give our heroine a black eye, speaking of 
her as " in that set to which Mrs. Jameson belonged, 
who make women blush and men grow insolent." 

Sir Charles and his wife next visited Paris with 
the intention of writing a book. Their letters car- 
ried them into every circle of Parisian society, " in 
the course of one evening, assisting at a Royalist 
dinner, drinking ultra tea, and supping oi rcpiibli- 
caincy And in each the popularit}^ of Lady Morgan 
was unbounded. Madame Jerome Bonaparte wrote 
to her : " The French admire you more than anyone 
who has appeared here since the battle of Waterloo 
in the form of an Englishwoman." When " France" 
appeared the clamor of abuse in England was 
enough to appall a very stout heart. John Wilson 
Croker was one of her most bitter assailants, and 
attempted to annihilate her in the Quarterly. She 
balanced matters by caricaturing him as " Counsellor 
Crawley " in her next novel, in a way that hit and 
hurt, and by a witticism which lives, while his en- 
venomed sentences are forgotten. Some one was 
telling her that Croker was among the crowd who 
thought they could have managed the battle of 



Lady Morgan 127 

Waterloo much better than Wellington, whose suc- 
cess, in their estimation, was only a fortunate mis- 
take. She exclaimed, " Oh, I can believe it. He had 
his secret for winning the battle ; he had only to put 
his " Notes on Boswell's Johnson " in front of the 
British lines, and all the Bonapartes that ever existed 
could never have got tJirougJi tJievi ! " Maginn in Black- 
ivood gave unmerciful cuts at her superficial opinions, 
ultra sentiments, and chambermaid French. Frasers 
Magazine compliinented her sardonically on her sim- 
ple style, being happy to observe that she had re- 
duced the number of languages used, as the Sibyl 
did her books, to three, wisely discarding German, 
Spanish, the dead and Oriental languages. But she 
received the cannonade, which would have crushed 
some women, with perfect equanimity. As a com- 
pensation, she was the toast of the day, and at some 
grand reception had a raised dais only a little lower 
than that provided for the duchess de Berri. At a 
dinner at Baron Rothschild's, Careme, the Delmon- 
ico of those times, surprised her with a column of 
ingenious confectionery architecture on which was 
inscribed her name spun in sugar. It was a more 
equivocal compliment when Walter Scott christened 
two pet donkeys, Hannah More and Lady Morgan. 
The chapters on society are extremely readable. 
She tells us how Robespierre, during the most san- 
guinary period of his career, wore a muslin waist- 
coat lined with rose-colored silk, and a coat of the 
most tender blue. Josephine she represents as ab- 



128 Lady Morgan 

surdly whimsical about her toilettes. " I am very ill 
to-day," she said one morning. " Give me a cap 
which suggests delicate health." This style was 
presented. " But this is too sick, they will believe 
now I am about to die." A more healthy head-dress 
was presented for inspection. " And now," said the 
Empress, with a languid yawn, " And nozv, you make 
me too robust." 

"Florence Macarthy" another novel, attacking 
the social and political abuses in Irish government, 
was her next work. Colburn, her publisher, who had 
just presented her with a beautiful parure of ame- 
thysts, now proposed that she and her husband 
should go to Italy. " Do it, and get up another book 
— the lively lady to sketch men and manners, the 
metaphysical balance wheel contributing the solid 
chapters on laws, politics, science, and education." 
They accepted the offer, and received the same extra- 
ordinary attention as in their former tour, and her 
picture was displayed in shop windows. This may 
be accounted for by the fact that it was well known 
that they were to prepare a book on Italy. It was 
equally well known that Lady Morgan had a sharp 
tongue and still sharper pen ; so that people who 
lived in glass houses, as did many of the magnates, 
were remarkably civil to " Miladi," even those who 
regarded her tour among them as an unjustifiable 
invasion. " Byron pronounced this book an excellent 
and fearless work. During her sojourn in Italy, 
Lady Morgan became enthusiastic about Salvator 



Lady Morgan 129 

Rosa, and began to collect material for writing the 
history of his life and times, which was her own fa- 
vorite of all her writings." 

In 1825 the "Dairy" is started, chatty, full of 
gossip and incident. She writes, October 30th : " A 
ballad-singer was this morning singing beneath my 
window, in a strain most unmusical and melancholy. 
My own name caught my ear, and I sent Thomas 
out to buy the song. Here is a stanza : 

" ' Och, Dublin City, there's no doubting, 
Bates every city upon the say ; 
'Tis there you'll hear O'Connell spouting, 

And Lady Morgan making tay ; 
For 'tis the capital of the foinest nation, 

Wid charming pisantry on a fruitful sod, 
Fighting like divils for conciliation, 
An' hating one another for the love o' God.' " 

" The O'Briens and O'Flahertys " was published 
in 1827, and proved more popular than any of her 
previous novels. There is an allusion to it in the 
interesting account which Lord Albemarle gives us 
of his acquaintance with Lady Morgan : " A number 
of pleasant people used to assemble of an evening in 
Lady Morgan's ' nut-shell ' in Kildare street. When 
I first met her she was in the height of her popularity. 
In her new novel she tells me I am to figure as a 
certain count, a great traveler who made a trip to 
Jerusalem for the sole object of eating artichokes in 
their native country. The chief attraction in the 
Kildare street ' at homes ' was her sister Olivia (Lady 
Clark), who used to compose and sing charming 



130 Lady Morgan 

Irish songs, for the most part squibs on the Dublin 
society of the day. One of the verses ran thus : 

" We're swarming alive, 
Like bees in a hive, 

With talent and janius and beautiful ladies ; 
We've a duke in Kildare, 
And a Donnybrook Fair ; 

And if that wouldn't plaze, why n9thing would plaze yez. 
We've poets in plenty. 
But not one in twenty 

Will stay in ould Ireland to keep her from sinking. 
They say they can't live 
Where there's nothing to give. 

Och, what business have poets with ating or dhrinking ! " 

Justly proud of her sister, Lady Morgan was in 
the habit of addressing every new comfer with, " I 
must make you acquainted with my Livy." She 
once used this form of words to a gentleman who 
had just been worsted in a fierce encounter of wit 
with the fascinating lady. " Yes, madam," he replied, 
■" I happen to know your Livy, and I only wish ' your 
Livy ' was Tacitus T 

Few of Lady Morgan's bon-mots have been pre- 
served, but one is given which shows that she occa- 
sionally indulged in a pun. Some one, speaking of 
a certain bishop who was rather lax in his observance 
of Lent, said he believed he would eat a horse on 
Ash Wednesday. " Very suitable diet," remarked 
her ladyship, " if it were 3. fast horse." 

The " Diary " progresses slowly by fitful jerks. 
Here is a characteristic entry : " April j, 18J4. My 
journal has gone to the dogs. I am so fussed and 



Lady Morgan 131 

fidgeted with my dear charming world, that I can- 
not write ; I forget days and dates. Ouf ! last night, 
at Lady Stepney's, met the Milmans, Mrs. Norton, 
Rogers, Sydney Smith, and others ; among them, 
poor, dear Jane Porter. She told me she was taken 
for me the other night, and talked to as such by a 
party of Americans. She is tall, lank, and lean, and 
lackadaisical, dressed in the deepest black, with 
rather a battered black gauze hat and the air of a 
regular Melpomene. / am the reverse of all this, 
and, without vanity, the best-dressed woman wher- 
ever I go. Last night, I wore a blue satin trimmed 
fully with magnificent point lace — light blue velvet 
hat and feather, with an aigrette of sapphires and 
diamonds. Voila ! Lord Jeffrey came up to me, and 
we had such a flirtation ! When he comes to Ireland 
we are to go to Donnybrook Fair together ; in short, 
having cut me down with his tomahawk as a reviewer, 
he smothers me with roses as a man. I always say 
of my enemies before we meet, ' Let me at them ! ' " 
Of the same soiree she writes again : " There was 
jMiss Jane Porter, looking like a shabby canoness. 
There was Mrs. Somerville in an astronomical cap. 
I dashed in in my blue satin and point lace, and 
showed them how an authoress should dress." 

Her conceit was fairly colossal. The reforms in 
legislation for Ireland were, in her estimation, owing 
to her novel of " Florence Macarthy." She professed 
to have taught Taglioni the Irish jig. Of her toilette, 
made largely by her own hands, she was comically 



132 Lady Morgan 

vain. In " The Fraserians," a charming off-hand de- 
scription of the contributors to that magazine, Lady 
Morgan is depicted trying on a big, showy bonnet 
before a mirror with a funny mixture of satisfaction 
and anxiety as to the effect. 

Chorlfey, the feared and fearless critic of the 
Athencsum, speaks of Lady Morgan as one of the 
most peculiar and original literary characters he 
ever met. After a long and searching analysis he 
adds : " However free in speech, she never shocked 
decorum — never had to be appealed or apologized 
for as a forlorn woman of genius under difficulties." 
" A compound of the most startling contradictions, 
impossible to be overlooked or forgotten, though 
possible to be described in two ways, both true, yet 
the one diametrically opposed to the other. Her 
life, were it truly told, would be one of the most sin- 
gular contributions to the history of gifted woman 
that the world has ever seen." 

An American paper, the Boston Literary Gaaette, 
gave a personal description which was not sufficiently 
flattering, and roused the lady's indignant comments. 
It dared to state that she was " short, with a broad 
face, blue, inexpressive eyes, and seemed, if such a 
thing may be named, about forty years of age." 
Imagine the sensations this paragraph produced ! 
She at once retorted, exclaiming in mock earnest, '' I 
appeal ! I appeal to the Titian of his age and coun- 
try — I appeal to you. Sir Thomas Lawrence. Would 
you have painted a short, squat, broad-faced, inex- 



Lady Morgan I33 

pressive, affected, Frenchified, Greenland-seal-like 
lady of any age? Would any money have tempted 
you to profane your immortal pencil, consecrated by 
nature to the Graces, by devoting its magic to such 
a model as this described by the Yankee artist of the 
Boston Literary? And yet, you did paint the picture 
of this Lapland Venus — this impersonation of a 
Dublin Bay Codfish ! . . . Alas ! no one could 
have said that I was forty then ; and this is the crud- 
est cut of all ! Had it been thirty-nine or fifty ! 
Thirty-nine is still under the mark, and fifty so far 
beyond it, so hopeless ; but forty — the critical age, 
the Rubicon — I cannot, will not, dwell on it. But, 
O America ! land of my devotion and my idolatry ! 
is it from yoii the blow has come ? Let Quarterly 
and Blackivoods libel, but the Boston Literary ! Et tu 
Brute ! " 

In 1837 she received a pension of three hundred 
pounds a year, a handsome recognition of her liter- 
ary merits, and entirely unsolicited. 

And in '39 she published a book entitled, " Woman 
and Her Master," solid and dull. She endeavored to 
prove that woman is composed of finer cla)'' than 
man, or is rather a bit of precious porcelain. And a 
masculine critic says : " The lady, having all the talk 
to herself, rides to the end upon a gently undulating 
wave of triumph." 

One more peep into her diary : 

" Moore looked very old and bald, but still retains 
his cock-sparrow air. He was very pleasant but 



134 Lady Morgan 

rather egotistical and shallow. He exclaimed bit- 
terly against writing-women, even against the beau- 
tiful Mrs. Norton. 

" ' In short,' said he, ' a writing-woman is one 
unsexed,' but suddenly recollecting himself, and 
pointing at me, said to my sister, ' except Jier.' " 

August 19th. 

" My soiree very fine. Learned, scientific, and 
tiresome. Fifty philosophers passed through my 
little salon last night. My sister. Lady Clark, made 
a song about them, which she sang to the amuse- 
ment of all." 

In December, 1846, she writes: " I dare not trust 
myself to chronicle my feelings as to passing years. 
To forget is my philosophy ; to hope would be my 
insanity ; to endure, and that I can, is my system. 
I am grateful for the good I yet enjoy ; to be so, is 
my religion." 

In 1850, she thoroughly enjoyed a sharp pen-to- 
pen encounter with Cardinal Wiseman on a state- 
ment made in her Italy. She writes : " Lots of 
notices and notes of my letter to Cardinal Wiseman. 
It has had the run of all the newspapers. The little 
old woman lives still." 

Lady Morgan had vanity, but it was a vanity so 
quaint and sparkling, so unlike in its frank honesty 
to all other vanities that it became absolutely a 
charm. 

" I am vain," she once said to Mrs. Hall, "but I 
have a right to be so. Look at the number of books 



Lady Morgan \}S 

I have written (over 70). Have I not been ordered 
to leave a kingdom and refused to obey ? Did ever 
woman move in a brighter sphere than I do ? My 
dear, I have three invitations to dinner to-day. One 
from a duchess, another from a countess, a third 
from a diplomatist. What am I ? A pensioned 
scribbler I Yet I am given gifts that queens might 
covet." 

Horace Smith, the wit and poet, was a frequent 
and delighted as well as delightful guest of Lady 
Morgan's. 

Once when invited to visit her he was suffering 
from an acute attack of bronchitis, and sent with his 
regrets the following doggerel : 

" O dear Lady Morgan, this pain in the organ 
Of sound, that the doctors call larynx, 
Is a terrible baulk to my walk and my talk, 
While my pen its extremity ne'er inks. 
Tho' I know its not sage, I'm transported with rage, 
Cause I can't be transported to Sydney. 

" When my daughters come back from your dwelling, alack ! 
What lots of facetiae they can tell us ! 
While /within clutch of a feast I can't touch, 
Am condemned to the tortures of Tantalus ! 
When last you came here, you had illness severe, 
Now /must call in the physician. 

We would meet, but the more we're disposed (what a bore) 
The greater our indisposition ! 

" O Morgans and Fate, do not bother my pate. 
With this Fata Morgana probations ; 
If ye can't make me well, rob Sir Charles of his spell, 
And his wife of her rare fascinations." 



136 Lady Morgan 

In Ireland, at the vice-regal drawing-rooms of the 
Marchioness Wellesley, Lady Morgan frequently 
figured. " Here," writes one, " here it was that I 
saw Lady Morgan for the first time, and as I had 
long pictured her to my imagination as a sylph-like 
person, nothing could equal my astonishment when 
the celebrated authoress stood before me. She cer- 
tainly formed a strange figure in the midst of that 
dazzling scene of beauty and splendor. Every lady 
present wore feathers and trains, but Lady Morgan 
scorned both appendages. Hardly more than four 
feet high, with a slightly curved spine, uneven 
shoulders and eyes, she glided about in a close- 
cropped wig bound by fillet or solid band of gold, 
her face all animation and with a witty word for 
everybody." 

Mrs. Kemble thought her a clever, vain, lively, 
good-natured woman. She says, " My relations with 
the lively, amusing authoress consisted merely in an 
exchange of morning visits, during one of which she 
plied me with a breathless series of pressing invita- 
tions to breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, evening 
parties, to meet everybody that I did not know, and 
upon my declining all these offers of hospitable 
entertainment, for I had at that time withdrawn 
myself entirely from society, and went nowhere, she 
exclaimed, " But what in the world do you do with 
yourself in the evening? " 

" Sit with my father, or remain alone." 

" Ah ! " said the society-loving little lady, with an 



Lady Morgan 13 7 

exasperated Irish accent, " Come out of that sphare 
of solitary self-sufiiciency ye live in, do ! " which ob- 
jurgation certainly presented in a most ludicrous 
light my life of very sad seclusion, and sent us 
both into fits of laughter. 

In 1828, O'Connell paid a graceful tribute to the 
achievements of Lady Morgan. " To Irish female 
talent and patriotism we owe much. There is one 
name consecrated by a generous devotion to the 
best interests of Ireland — a name sacred to the 
cause of liberty and of everything — great, virtuous, 
or patriotic ; the name of an illustrious woman, who 
has suffered unmanly persecution for her talented 
and chivalrous adherence to her native land." 

" It is to me delightful," writes Sir Jonah Bar- 
rington, " to see a woman solely by the force of her 
own natural talent, succeed triumphantly in the line 
of letters she has adopted, and in despite of the most 
virulent, illiberal, and unjust attacks ever yet made 
on any author by mercenary reviewers." 

Chorley, the feared and fearless critic of the 
Athenaeuin, speaks of Lady Morgan as one of the 
most peculiar and original literary characters he ever 
met. 

" A composition of natural genius, acquired 
accomplishments, audacity, that flew at the highest 
game, shrewd thought ; and research at once intel- 
ligent and superficial ; personal coquetries and 
affectations balanced by sincere and strenuous fam- 
ily affection ; extreme liberality of opinions, relig- 



138 Lady Morgan 

ions and political; extremely narrow literary sym- 
pathies, united with a delight in all the most tinsel 
pleasures, and indulgent of the most inane aristo- 
cratic society ; a genial love for art, limited by the 
most inconceivable prejudices of ignorance ; in 
brief, a compound of the most startling contradic- 
tions impossible to be overlooked or forgotten,, 
though possible to be described in two ways, both 
true, yet the one diametrically opposed to the other.^' 

Her life, were it truly told, would be one of the 
most singular contributions to the history of gifted 
woman that the world has ever seen. 

However free in speech she never shocked 
decorum — never had to be appealed or apologized 
for as a forlorn woman of genius under difficulties. 

The closing chapters of any biography must of 
necessity be sad ; friends falling to the grave like 
autumn leaves. 

First her beloved husband, then her darling sis- 
ter Olivia, and her journal she now calls her " Dooms- 
day Book." 

December 25, 1858, was Lady Morgan's last birth- 
day. " She assembled a few old friends at dinner 
and did the honor, with all the brilliancy of her best 
days. She told stories with infinite finesse and droll- 
ery, and after dinner sang a broadly comic song,, 
which she said must be good, as it was written 
by a church dignitary, so she gave from Father 
Prout 'The Night before Larry was Stretched.' It 
was a custom of those days to wake a man, who was 



Lady Morgan 139 

to be Ihung, the night before his execution, so the 
poor lad might enjoy the whisky drank in his 
honor." 

There was one book more, positively the last, 
" The Odd Volume," but she never gave up her pen, 
that "worn-out stump of a goose-quill" until her 
physician literally took it from her fingers. 

She grew old gracefully, showing great kindness 
to young authors, enduring partial blindness and 
comparative neglect with dignity and cheerfulness. 
Her heart was always young. 

Some one writes : " The last time we saw the 
' Wild Irish Girl ' she was seated on a couch in her 
bedroom as pretty and picturesque a ruin of old-lady 
womankind as ever we looked upon ; her black silk 
dressing-gown fell round her petite form, which 
seemed so fragile that we feared to see her move. 
We recalled to memory Maria Edgeworth, having 
believed her to be the smallest great woman in the 
world, but Lady Morgan seemed not half her size." 

Another says : " Everything in her room was 
artistic, and you might have imagined yourself in 
the presence of Mad. de Genlis, feeling that after the 
passing away of that small form, which enshrined 
so much vitality and so large and expansive a mind, 
the last link between us and the Atkins, the Bar- 
baulds, the D'Arblays would be gone." 

She met death patiently and with unfailing cour- 
age rather than religious resignation on the evening 
of the 1 6th of April, 1859. 



140 Lady Morgan 

Deference to her sensitiveness prevents any allu- 
sion to her age. 

"She lived through the love, admiration, and ma- 
lignity of three generations of men and was, in short, 
a literary Ninon, as brisk and captivating in 1859 as 
when George was Prince and the author of ' Kate 
Kearney' divided the laureateship of society and 
song with Tom Moore," one of the most popular and 
best abused writers of her time. No one reads her 
now. Why do I resurrect her ? Because she was 
such a charming personality, industrious, cheerful, 
lovable, womanly ; making the most and the best of 
her life according to her convictions. And because, 
as I read her life, and moralized over the hosts of 
ambitious men and Avomen who wrote so much and 
so well, ■ and are almost unknown, she seemed to 
stand at my elbow, merry, but eager, and shaking 
her fan, she whispered, " Tell your friends all about 
me, that's a darling. Give me one more chance to 
be heard of in your beautiful broad America." So I 
offer this pen photograph of Sydney, Lady Morgan. 



CHRISTOPHER NORTH AND HIS FRIENDS. 



I devote this hour with special pleasure to John 
Wilson — grand old lion of the North ; with the 
body of an athlete, the brain of a genius, the heart of 
a woman ; as remarkable as a pugilist, pedestrian, 
sportsman as for his literary criticisms, sketches of 
Scottish life, and logical eloquent lectures on moral 
philosophy. 

Oh for the power to bring the man before you as 
he zvas, of commanding stature, with the brow and 
features of a god, clear blue eyes, a wonderfully mo- 
bile face, locks of the true keltic yellow floating over 
his broad shoulders, the embodiment and ideal of 
vigorous manhood. 

" You are a man ! " said Napoleon, when he first 
saw Goethe. So exclaimed strangers as they passed 
Wilson on the street. Walter Scott is supposed to 
have depicted him in his sketch of Richard the Lion- 
hearted. He certainly fulfilled Emerson's idea that 
it is the first duty of every man to be a splendid ani- 
mal, anticipating Gail Hamilton's flattering state- 
ment : " There is nothing so splendid as a splendid 
man." He has always been one of my heroes, and 
although the rose-color and glamor which surrounded 
him in childish days is dimmed, so that I can see his 
faults, there is still a wondrous charm connected 
with his name. 



142 Christopher North and his Friends 

Such enthusiasm, such strong personal magnet- 
ism, is incapable of oblivion. I know that at the 
last, his mind and body failed — that like other men, 
he died and was buried ; but, to me, he is still in the 
prime of life, never old, never changed. 

I think about him, read about him, picture him, 
till he glows a living being beside me. Up to his 
neck in water, fishing ; or running, leaping, wrest- 
ling, rowing, and excelling in all ; delighting the 
students in Edinburgh University ; an odd successor 
to Dugald Stewart and Dr. Brown, a victorious rival 
of Sir William Hamilton ; walking with his wife over 
the hills of Scotland, chatting and chaffing with the 
Ettrick Shepherd at Ambrose Tavern ; boating on 
the Windemere ; " laboring in his study when the 
fever of composition was upon him, upon poem, 
essay, or story, his eyes gleaming like a panther's, his 
unkempt beard adding a grim wild force to his ex- 
pression, the whole effect that of ' an inspired 
buffalo ' ; spending several weeks with a camp of 
Gypsies ; riding in mad chase after a neighbor's bull, 
at half-past two on a summer's morning, with a 
couple of jolly friends, all armed Vv^ith immense 
spears fourteen feet long ; leaping in rivalry with 
some tinkers who had pitched their tents by the 
roadside ; playing the waiter at an inn table at mid- 
night, half for the frolic, half to study character ; 
holding the hand and closing the eyes of his faithful 
old servant, Billy Balmer, who had come from far to 
die near him, or sitting by the bedside of an old 



Christopher North and his Friends 143 

woman, long an inmate of his home, arranging her 
pillows with awkward but gentle hand or reading 
her favorite verses in the Bible ; petting a hapless 
sparrow ; pampering and feeding no less than sixty- 
two game cocks in his back yard, with a hospital for 
the invalids in an attic. 

Twisting a whip from the fist of a brutal carter, 
who was cruelly beating his horse, and placing the 
wretched animal in better control than that of its 
owner, leading the venerable, raw-boned quadruped 
through the fashionable streets of Edinburgh, an 
act which required moral courage. And courage he 
never lacked in things great or small. A passionate 
lover of nature, a despiser of shams. " Intolerant to 
no one but quacks and cockneys," erratic, preju- 
diced, intense, affectionate, truthful, do you not see 
him? The brawny-chested, broad-shouldered, fire- 
eyed, lofty-browed, sunny-faced, sunny-hearted, Kit 
North ! His name scarcely appears in our text- 
books on English literature. His works are not 
generally known in this country, but the few who 
do appreciate his power and versatility, his humor, 
pathos, satire, wit and tenderness, wisdom and elo- 
quence, value him as a tried and intimate friend, and 
find in the " Noctes " an unfailing fountain of delight. 

The Shepherd knew what he was talking about 
when he said to Christopher — " Listenin' to you, sir, 
is like lookin' into a well; at first ye think it clear, but 
no verra deep, but ye let drop in a peeble and what 
a length o' time ere the air-bells come up to the sur- 
face frae the profoond." 



144 Christopher North and his Friends 

In Scotland he is remembered and read, not as 
Scott and Burns, but first in the rank just after 
them — remembered with affection, enthusiasm, and 
respect. 

Look first at John Wilson as a beautiful child, 
full of life and fun, fond of angling when but a 
baby. He was only three years old when he ram- 
bled off one day, armed with a w;illow wand duly 
furnished with a thread line and crooked pin, to fish 
in a " wee burnie " of which he had taken' note, 
away a good mile from home. Unknown to anyone, 
the adventurer sallied forth for a "solitary cast" to 
spend a day of delight by the rippling stream, with 
what success we find recorded in Fytte First of 
Christopher in his sporting jacket. 

"A tug — a tug! With face ten times flushed 
and pale by turns ere you could count ten, he has at 
last strength in the agitation of his fear and joy to 
pull away at the monster, and there he lies in his 
beauty among the gowaftis and the greensward, for 
he has whapped him right over his head and far 
away — a fish a quarter of an ounce in weight, and, at 
the very least, two inches long ! Off he flies on 
wings of wind to his father, mother, and sisters and 
brothers and cousins, and all the neighborhood, 
holding the fish aloft in both hands, still fearful of 
its escape, and like a genuine child of corruption, his 
eyes brighten at the first blush of cold blood on his 
small puny fingers. He carries about with him, 
upstairs and downstairs, his prey upon a plate, and 



Christopher North and his Friends 145 

will not wash his hands, for he exults in the silver 
scales adhering to the thumb-nail that scooped out 
the pin." 

While the future Christopher was asserting him- 
self out of doors, the " professor " was displaying his 
capacity in the nursery. 

His sisters looked up to him, and admired and 
wondered, as standing upon a chair he would address 
them and the servants. One sermon he was often 
called on to repeat, with this text : " There was a 
fish, and it was a de'il o' a fish, and it was ill to its 
young anes." In this allegory he displayed pathos, 
humor, and oratorical power. He was also remark- 
able for his drawings, especially of animals. 

A tiger, full of crouching life, just ready to 
spring, was exhibited by his mother to admiring 
guests. 

This precocious boy, unlike many geniuses, was 
foremost in the playground, king of all sports, 
throwing his whole energy into either study or pla}^ 
a favorite with everyone. 

Always intensely susceptible to grief or gladness, 
his first real sorrow was the death of his sister. He 
was borne from her grave death-like, and wishing to 
die. And in his twelfth year he lost his father. 
" As he stood at the head of the grave and heard the 
dull earth rattling over the coffin, his emotions so 
overcame him that he fainted. His daughter re- 
marks that this union of strength and sensitiveness 
suggests those blue-eyed and long-haired Norsemen, 



146 Christopher North and his Friends 

who made their songs amid the smiting of swords, 
swift of foot, strong of arm, skilled in love, ready in 
counsel, fierce to their enemies, tender and true to 
their friends. 

At Glasgow University he showed the same pas- 
sionate vehetnence and tendency to extremes, in 
study, social life, poetry, music, wild escapade — yet 
never immoral nor dissipated. Such superabundant 
vitality is apt to be misunderstood by the common- 
place majority to whom such ebullitions savor of 
intoxication or insanity or a lamentable eccentricity, 
but more of such individuality, independence, en- 
thusiasm, and outdoor life would be an improve- 
ment to our race. 

He kept a diary in college days, like himself, 
odd and queerly mixed. In one line, " Gave Archy 
my buckskins to clean " ; in next, " Prize for the 
best specimen of the Socratic mode of reasoning 
given out in Logic " ; again, " Called on my grand- 
mother ; went to a sale of books ; had a boxing- 
match of three rounds with Lloyd — ^^^rt-/ him " ; or, 
*' ran three miles on the Paisley road for a wager 
against a chaise with Andrew Napier — beat them 
both ! " In vacation, "Finished my poem on 
Slavery. Began an essay on the Faculty of Imagin- 
ation. Stayed at home all day. Wrote on the Phil- 
osophy of the Stoics. 

"For barley sugar, 6 pence. 

" Began to learn the flute by myself. 

" Prizes distributed, got three of them." 



Christopher North and his Friends 147 

Sotheby said it was worth a journey from Lon- 
don to hear him translate a Greek chorus, and at a 
later day, the brawny Cumberland men called him 
*' a verra bad un to lick." 

" I trust I make myself understood," he once said 
to such a man, after knocking him down. 

When a boy he won a bet by walking six miles 
in two minutes less than an hour. He was equally 
remarkable as a leaper, surpassing all competitors. 
He once jumped across the Cheswell, twenty-three 
feet clear, with a run of only a few yards, the great- 
est feat of this kind on record. Gen. Washington's 
greatest leap was but twenty-one feet. It is curious 
that Wilson's learned rival. Sir W. Hamilton, was 
also a noted leaper. 

At Oxford he was the first boxer, leaper, cock- 
fighter, and runner among the students, but gained 
the Newdigate prize for poetry, and became so 
flaming a Radical that he would not allow a servant 
to black his shoes, but might be seen, the yellow- 
haired glorious savage, performing that interesting 
operation himself. 

At that early period he strongly admired Words- 
worth and wrote him a letter of extraordinary length, 
which the contemplative bard kindly answered. In 
after years he lost all patience with the diffuse dreary 
wastes that marred his longer poems. The bald sim- 
plicity of his childish doggerel when he was true to 
his own theories about poetry was too much for Wil- 
son's sense of tjie ludicrous, and his over-mastering 



148 Christopher North and his Friends 

conceit caused this former favorite to dwindle to the 
proportions of a good and great old man, who, when 
he forget his creed, rose to sublimity. If all dared 
to express their honest opinions as did Wilson, we 
should find there had been a good deal of sham ad- 
miration about many of our beacon lights in litera- 
ture, from Chaucer to Browning. 

At college, too, there was an unfortunate love 
affair, a tangled net of adoration, hope, perplexity, 
mystification, and despair, a necessary experience 
apparently in a poet's career, from Spenser's Rosa- 
lind to Tennyson's Lillian. 

After graduation in 1807, he built, all on the 
ground floor, a beautiful home in Westmoreland, 
which De Quincey describes in his glowing way. It 
was Wilson, by the way, who gave the name to the 
" Lake School." De Quincey was impressed by the 
humility and gravity with which Wilson spoke of 
himself, no tinge of arrogance in his manner, a 
refreshing contrast to the colossal conceit of his 
neighbors. 

There were merry regattas on the Lake and mer- 
rier dances on shore. De Quincey says that Wilson 
was the best male dancer, not professional, he had 
ever seen, although he had never taken a lesson ; and 
it was at a ball that he met his fate, Miss Jane Penny, 
a leading belle of the Lake country, rich, accom- 
plished, and beautiful. And when he danced with 
her, which he did often, they attracted all eyes, and 
many stopped to watch them. They were often 



Christopher North and his Friends 149 

cheered as they entered a room, in mere admiration 
of their appearance. 

" So stately his form and so lovely her face, 
That never a hall such a galliard did grace." 

Pretty Miss Jane seems for a time quite jealous of 
a bewitching widow to whom Wilson was attentive. 
She writes : "Mr. Wilson is flirting with a pretty 
little widow. She is generally admired by the male 
part of creation, but not by our sex. I don't know 
whether Mr. Wilson's attentions to her will end in a 
marriage, but I hope not — for his sake. I think he 
is deserving a very superior woman." 

Most truly did he win one, secured in Miss Penny. 
It was an ideal companionship ; one of unbroken 
happiness. He was married on the nth of May, 
1 8 1 1 , and wrote that morning to his most intimate 
friends of his wife, with these words : 

" She is, in gentleness, innocence, sense, and feel- 
ing, surpassed by no woman, and has remained pure 
as from her Maker's hands. Surely, if I know myself 
I am not deficient in kindness and gentleness of na- 
ture. I will to my dying day love, honor, and worship 
her." This determination was most fully kept, for 
Wilson was a model of a lover and husband in one. 

Thenceforth his life had a deeper purpose, and 
his home was a place of pure sunshine. There was 
no wedding tour, but they went at once to his cottage 
home. 

During the first year of married life he published 
" The Isle of Palms." The sale was not gratifying. Of 



150 Christopher North and his Friends 

the four happy years that were passed in the cottage 
at Elleray, from i8i i to 1815, there is little to be told. 
The happiest families, like the happiest nations, 
have no history. Then came unlooked-for trouble. 
An uncle proved dishonest and treacherous, squander- 
ing Wilson's entire fortune, and ruined himself also. 
Wilson bore the blow bravely, and generously assisted 
to support this disgraced relative. He now had to 
leave his beloved sycamore-sheltered Elleray, going 
to Edinburgh to live with his mother, a stately, hand- 
some old lady, who welcomed him and his family to 
her pleasant house in Queen street. In 181 5, he was 
called to the bar, but that routine was impossible for 
him. He did sometimes get cases, but said laugh- 
ingly afterward, " I did not know what the devil to 
do with them." 

About the beginning of July, 181 5, Mr. and Mrs. 
Wilson set out for a pedestrian tour through the 
Highlands, which was successfully accomplished, 
astonishing the villagers wherever they stopped by 
their striking appearance. One day she walked 
twenty-five miles. On their return they were quite 
the lions of Edinburgh. It was predicted that Mrs. 
Wilson would come back sunburnt, weather-beaten, 
and freckled. But such expectations were agreeably 
disappointed. One old lady who called immediately 
exclaimed : " Weel, I declare, she's come back bon- 
nier than ever." 

De Quincey often accompanied Wilson on these 
tramps. Their friendship was lifelong. Sheltered at 



Christopher North and his Friends 151 

the house one stormy night, the marvelous little 
man remained a year. He gave his daily instructions 
to the cook in his own peculiar phraseology and with 
the minuteness and prolixity which never left him. 
The good soul listened in silent awe, entirely over- 
powered, as he requested that his slice of rare mutton 
be cut in a " diagonal rather than a longitudinal 
form," but gave as her private opinion, " That bodie 
has an mifu sicht o' words. My ain master would 
ha' ordered a hale table fu' in a little more than a 
haff o' his haun — and here's a' this claver about a bit 
mutton, nae bigger than a peni. Mr. De Quinshey 
would mak a gran' preacher — though I'm thinkin' 
that a hantle o' the folk would na ken what he was 
drivin' at. " A sensible criticism on the convolu- 
tions and intricacies of the Opium Eater's arabesque 
style, certainly as valuable as the comments of Grant 
White's washerwoman on puzzling passages in 
Shakespeare. 

The " City of the Plague," published next year 
(1816) was favorably criticised by Jeffrey, and Byron 
placed it among the great works of the age". But as 
a poet, Wilson will not live — strange to say ; he was 
too soft and feminine in style ; while as a word pain- 
ter he is almost unequaled. 

His novels, though exquisite specimens of poetic 
prose, are overloaded with sentiment and emotion, 
and the characters far above the average of Scot- 
tish rural life, yet they were hailed with delight when 
they appeared, producing the same sensation as 



152 Christopher North and his Friends 

George McDonald's first and best story, " The Annals 
of a Quiet Neighborhood." 

With the year 1 8 17, begins Wilson's connection 
with Blackzvood' s Magazine. 

At that time Edinburgh was crowded with clever 
men, most of them young,who felt that the Tory party, 
to which they belonged, had been too loudly crowed 
over by the Edinburgh Reviczv, the oldest of the great 
British quarterlies, originated by such men as Sydney 
Smith, Francis Jeffrey, Henry Brougham, and Francis 
Horner. It was a tremendous power, with its light 
flying artillery of wit, personality, and sarcasm. 
Jeffrey was a critic to be feared and hated. Words- 
worth used to class Robespierre, Bonaparte, and 
Jeffrey together as the three most formidable ene- 
mies of the human race who had appeared within his 
remembrance. Jeffrey had dared to say of his 
" Excursion," " This will never do." 

A rival magazine was needed, and Blackwood, the 
bookseller, started one. The first numbers were de- 
scribed as " dull and decent." This was not what was 
wanted. Blackwood dismissed his editors and ob- 
tained the services of James Hogg, who by his 
" Queen's Wake " had just taken rank among the 
first poets of Scotland, of Lockhart, Scott's son-in- 
law, who for caustic criticism almost equaled Jeffrey, 
Dr. Magrim, a witty and learned Irishman, John 
Gait, the novelist, Robert Sym, the Timothy Tickler 
of the " Noctes," and John Wilson. 

Hogg contributed the famous Chaldee Manu- 



Christopher North and his Friends 153 

script, a literary rocket, a sharp satire upon the Whig 
party in biblical language. Grant White's " New 
Gospel of Peace" is closely like this. This was received 
with dismay, astonishment, wrath, there was a wild 
outcry through the city, and it was threatened to 
prosecute Mr. Blackwood " for a profane parody of 
the Bible," though we imagine the personalities dis- 
tressed the accusers more than the profanity. He 
paid i^i,ooo in costs and damages, but Blackwood 
was looked for .eagerly afterwards ; and it was never 
deficient in spicy comrnents, audacious, lively, unjus- 
tified, unscrupulous, and witty. 

At one time it was a habit to review in Black- 
wood books which had never been published, such 
as " Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolks." A Dr. Peter 
Morris was invented as the letter-writer. Lockhart, 
who had originated the joke, was forced to complete 
the letters as a third edition of the book. The 
author's name became well known, and the magazine 
gained much credit for having introduced Dr. Morris 
to the world. 

In this new magazine the genius of Wilson found 
free scope. Like an athlete who never before 
had had room or occasion to display his powers, he 
now reveled in their exercise in an arena where the 
competitors were abundant and the onlookers 
eagerly interested. Month after month he poured 
fourth the exuberant current of his ideas on politics, 
poetry, philosophy, religion, art, books, men, and 
nature, with a freshness and force that seemed 



154 Christopher North and his Friends 

incapable of exhaustion and regardless of obstacles, 
dealing at first many a blow, which later he saw 
reason to repent. But the malignant attacks came 
from others, and he was never the editor, although 
the leading spirit. 

Wilson and Lockhart were the most versatile of 
all the band, between them capable at any time of 
providing the whole contents of a number. There 
was a striking contrast in the outward aspect of 
these men. Wilson, so ruddy, off-hand, and cheery, 
Lockhart, with pale olive complexion, thin lips, 
expression sombre and severe, and haughty, super- 
cilious manner, a man who could give you a chill, 
or, as someone said after a dinner in Boston, " I sat 
next Edward Everett yesterday, and caught a severe 
cold." He was well depicted by Wilson through the 
mouth of the Shepherd (who was made to say so much 
he never thought of), as " the Oxford collegian wi' a 
pale face and a black toozy head, but an ei like an 
eagle's." The black-haired, Spanish-looking Oxonian, 
with that uncanny laugh of his, was a dangerous 
person to encounter in the field of letters. " I've 
sometimes thocht, Mr. North," says the Shepherd, 
" that ye were a wee feared for him yoursel, and 
used rather without kenning it to draw in your 
horns." In the Chaldee he was called " The Scor- 
pion." Wilson impaled a victim as he did a fish, as 
if he loved him ; the other, cool, crafty, and lacking 
in compassion. 

Wilson said of himself : 



Christopher North and his Friends 155 

" We love to do our work by fits and starts. We 
hate to keep fiddling away, an hour or two at a time 
at one article for weeks. So off with our coat, and 
at it like a blacksmith. When we once get the way 
of it, hand over hip, we laugh at Vulcan and all his 
Cyclops. From nine of the morning till nine at 
night, we keep hammering away at the metal, iron 
or gold, till we produce a most beautiful article. A 
biscuit and a glass of Madeira, twice or thrice at the 
most, and then to a well-won dinner. In three days, 
gentle reader, have We, Christopher North, often 
produced a whole magazine — a most splendid num- 
ber. For the next three weeks we were as idle as a 
desert, and as vast as an autre, and thus we go, 
alternately laboring like an ant, and relaxing in the 
sunny air, like a dragon-fly, enamored of extremes." 

In its palmy days, Blackwood's Magazine realized 
an ideal which has never heen surpassed. Credit 
should be given to Wilson who invited Bulwer to 
contribute, which invitation stimulated the creation 
of " The Caxtons and My Novel," Bulwer's best 
prose production. Wilson was the first of his party 
to appreciate Shelley, and to do justice to Byron ; 
paid the most eloquent tributes to Burns and to 
Dickens. Seldom have discrimination and imagina- 
tive luxuriance been so combined. The names of 
the contributors secured by him furnish a brilliant 
array. No periodical was ever more indebted to the 
efforts of one individual. 

Let me give a few extracts to show his originality, 



156 Christopher North and his Friends 

insight, and power. Some wise heads insist that 
literature should be studied, enjoyed, or reviewed 
without any connection with the life and habits of 
the author, but I agree fully with Wilson when he 
says: 

"In reviewing, in particular what can be done 
without personality ? Nothing, nothing. What are 
books that don't express the personal characters of 
their authors ; and who can review books without 
reviewing those that wrote them. 

" Can a man read La Fontaine without perceiv- 
ing his personal good nature ? Swift's personal ill- 
nature is quite as visible. Can a man read Burns 
without having the idea of a great and a bold man, 
or Barry Cornwall without the very uncomfortable 
feeling of a little man and a timid one ? The whole 
of the talk about personality is cant. 

" Look at our literature now, and it is all periodical 
together. A thousand daily, thrice a week, twice a 
week, weekly newspapers, a hundred monthlies, 
fifty quarterlies, and twenty-five annuals. No mouth 
looks up now and is not fed ! On the contrary, we 
are in danger of being crammed ; an empty head is 
as rare as an empty stomach ; the whole day is one 
meal, one physical, moral, and intellectual feast; 
the public goes to bed with a periodical in her hand 
and falls asleep with it beneath her pillow. 

" What blockhead thinks now of reading Milton or 
Pope or Gray ? Paradise Lost is lost ; it has gone to 
the devil. Pope's Epistles are returned to the dead- 



/ 



Christopher North and his Friends 157 

letter office ; the age is too loyal for 'Ruin seize thee, 
ruthless king,' and the oldest inhabitant has forgot- 
ten ' the curfew tolls.' " 

" The great charm o' conversation is being aff on 
ony wind that blaws. Pleasant conversation between 
friends is just like walking through a mountainous 
kintra, at every glen-mouth the winn blaws frae a 
different airt." 

'■'■North. I believe country congregations are, in 
general, very attentive. 

'^Shepherd. Ay, ay. Sir! If twa are sleepin' ten 
are wauken, and I seriously think that mair than ae 
half o' them thats sleepin' enter into the spirit o' the 
sermon. You see they a' hear the text and the intro- 
ductory remarks and the heads, and fa'in asleep in a 
serious and solemn mood, they carry the sense alang 
in them ; neither can they be said no to hear an 
accompanyin' soun', so that it wadna be just fair 
to assert that they lose the sermon they dinna listen 
to, for thochts and ideas and feelings keep fioatin' 
down alang the streams o' silent thocht, and when 
they awaken at the " Amen," their minds, if no 
greatly instructed, hae been tranquilleezed ; they 
join loudly in the ensuing psalm, and without remem- 
bering mony o' the words, carry hame the feek o' the 
discoorse and a' the peculiarities of the doctrine." 

This is like the story of the dominie who, hearing 
from Sandy that he liked the Sabba day best of all, 
endeavored to draw him out, hoping for a compli- 
ment for his sermons. " Oh, yes. Sunday's the day 



158 Christopher North and his Friends 

for me, for then, you see, I gets into my clean claes, 
and goes to the kirk, and sits down in my pew, and 
shuts the door, and lays up my legs, and thinks o' 
nothin'," 

"The human heart is shaped like this table — a 
sort o' oval, and thus friends can be accommodated 
in the ane and at the ither without ony body pre- 
tendin' to ony precedence, and to the prevention o' 
a quarrel on that pint, atween love and pride!' 

" The joy of grief. That is a joy known but to 
the happy." 

''James. The soul that can dream of past sorrows 
till they touch it with a pensive delight, can be 
suffering under no severe trouble." 

" We idolize Genius to the neglect of the worship 
of Virtue. One truly good action performed is 
worth all that Shakespeare ever wrote." 

" That which in real life would be fulsome cannot 
breathe sweetly in fiction, for fiction is still a reflec- 
tion of truth, and truth is sacred." 

On Wordsworth. 
North. 

"Why, Tickler, many of the poets of our days 
are, with all their genius, a set of enormous spoons. 
Wordsworth walks about the woods like a great satyr, 
or rather, like the god Pan, and piping away upon 
his reed, sometimes most infernally out of tune. He 
thinks he is listening, at the very least, to music equal 
to that of the spheres, and that nobody can blow a 
note but himself." He pronounced the "Excur- 



Christopher North and his Friends 159 

sion " the worst poem of any character in the English 
language, and, in a rollicking series of rhymes on 
various authors, exclaimed : 

Now here's to Will Wordsworth, so wise and so wordy, 
And the sweet, simple hymns of his own hurdy-gurdy. 
Who in vain blows the bellows of Milton's old organ, 
While he thinks he could lull all the snakes on the Gorgon. 

And, after a gallant and protracted rhapsody over 
the lady poets of the land, Mrs. Hemans, L. E,, etc., 
he closes with : 

"And what the devil, then, would you be at, with 
your great bawling He-Poets from the Lakes, who 
go round and round about, strutting upon nothing, 
like so many turkey-cocks gobbling, with a long, red 
pendant at their noses, and frightening away the 
fair and lovely swans as they glide down the waters 
of immortality ? " 

" The ' Noctes Ambrosianae,' so unlike anything 
else that had appeared, delighted the reading world; 
and Wilson seemed a diffused Shakespeare, or 
Shakespeare in a hurry, with a printer's devil wait- 
ing at the door. Falstaff was, for a season, eclipsed 
by the ' Shepherd,' and Mercutio and Hamlet to- 
gether had their glories darkened by the blended 
wit and wisdom, pathos and fancy, of ' Christopher 
North.' " 

Stevenson said in an early essay, of the more per- 
ennial part of the " Noctes," "■ We have here, what 
is perhaps the most durable monument to Wilson's 
fame. We might class him as a Presbyterian Fawn. 



160 Christopher North and his Friends 

It is a thousand pities that the ' Noctes Ambrosi- 
anse ' are now so little appreciated. Fashion is incal- 
culable, but I cannot think they will be permanently 
forgotten," 

These papers breathe the very essence of the 
Bacchanalian revel of clever men, yet a too literal 
interpretation must not be given to their festivities. 
There was a small and crushed-up-in-a-corner hostel- 
rie by the name of " Ambrose's Inn," where the 
friends occasionally met, but these dialogues were 
written with prolonged toil in a rapid manner, and 
upon no stronger inspiration than a chicken for din- 
ner and a cup of tea. 

This glorification of the delights of drinking 
belongs to a Scotsman's patriotism, and a man should 
no more be considered to endorse all that he writes 
in that convivial strain than a poet when he sings of 
love, wheret he Clorindas and Delias, from Horace 
to Swinburne, are two-thirds of them ideal creations. 

This is not an apology for what seems and is a 
blot, but simply a statement of facts. " The Paradoxes 
of Literature " is a fertile and startling theme. 
Wilson's characters in the " Noctes " are equally 
idealized. 

Hogg was an interesting man and a rustic phe- 
nomenon, but Christopher made Jamie his mouth- 
piece, and the Ettrick Shepherd of the " Noctes " is 
one of the most finished creations which dramatic 
genius ever evoked. Some of Wilson's thoughts on 
Life, Faith, Death, Immortality, given as the off-hand 



Christopher North and his Friends 161 

talk of the Shepherd, are perfect — sermons without 
any effect of preaching, impressive, helpful, elevating 
— too long, unfortunately, for quotation. 

Hogg's prose writings were inferior to his poetry. 
He seemed unconscious of the beauty of his pastoral 
description and imagery. When Jordan praised his 
verses highly, the honest Shepherd rejoined: " Surely 
ye're daft; its only joost true about the wee burdies 
and the cows at e'en, and the wild flowers, and the 
sunset, and clouds, and things, and the feelings they 
creat. A canna fathom what ye're making a' this 
fuss about. Its joost a plain description of what every 
body can see ; there's nae grand poetry in it." The 
intimacy between these men was delightful. Wilson 
once walked fifty miles in one day to be present at a 
Burns dinner, to pay a glowing tribute to Hogg. 
The simple-hearted old fellow, who had not expected 
it in the least, could only stammer out a few broken 
words of thanks, his face flushed scarlet with feeling, 
his eyes brimful of tears. 

A guest at the Burns dinner in 1816 recollects 
that, somewhat late in the evening, Wilson mounted 
on one of the tables, danced a pas-seul among the 
wine glasses and decanters without any fracture of 
the crystal, aud then descending, resumed his seat, 
with a ludicrous air of intense and philosophic grav- 
ity, as if, in fact, he had done nothing worthy of con- 
sideration or gratitude. He longed for the power to 
write a popular song, saying, " I know w^hat it should 
be, but I cannot do it. If I could write one that 



162 Christopher North and his Friends 

would be sung in valley, hill, and plain, I should die 
happy. There is not a peasant in Scotland who does 
not know Burns' Song-s." 

We now come to an important event. In April, 
1820, the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University 
of Edinburgh became vacant by the death of Dr. 
Brown. Sir William Hamilton, a whig, who was 
well fitted for the place, and John Wilson, a tory, 
offered themselves as candidates, and after a severe 
contest, Wilson was triumphantly elected. Appar- 
ently, a most unfit and incongruous appointment, if 
moral philosophy is the gate to theology, as Chalmers 
insisted, and his opponents represented him as a 
reveler and blasphemer, even attacking his private 
character, which was absolutely unassailable. " No 
doubt he was a humorist, and there was so little dis- 
tinctively " moral " in the rollicking wit of Black- 
wood that the majority stood aghast at the fact of 
this magnificent mad-cap, this reckless, half-savage 
Titan of Literature, spirited into the throne of 
Philosophy ! Scott was Wilson's firm supporter in 
this trying time, indignantly denying the charges 
brought. 

The faithful Billy Balmer was the first to bring 
the news home. Mrs. Wilson writes : " He went 
yesterday morning and stayed near the scene of 
action till it was all over, and then came puffing 
down with a face of delight, to tell me that Master 
was ahead — a good deal ! " 

Then came the tremendous tug of preparation. 



Christopher North and his Friends 163 

It was the last of July. Th-e class was to meet the 
beginning of November, and 120 lectures must be 
prepared. The loving wife writes : " Mr. W. is very- 
well, but as thin as a rat, and no wonder, he says it 
will take him one month at least to make out a cata- 
logue of the books he has to read through and con- 
sult. I am perfectly appalled when I go into the 
dining-room and see all the folios, quartos, and duo- 
decimos with which it is literally filled, and the poor 
culprit himself sitting in the midst, with a beard as 
long and red as an adult carrot, for he has not shaved 
for a fortnight." The opening of the session, Chris- 
topher's first appearance as a professor, was an 
interesting occasion. 

" The lecture-room was crowded to the ceiling," 
says an eye-witness. Such a collection of hard- 
browed, scowling Scotsmen muttering over their 
knot-sticks, I never saw. The professor entered 
with a bold step and in profound silence. Every- 
one expected some propitious introduction of him- 
self, but he began in a voice of thunder right into 
the matter of his lecture, and kept up unflinchingly 
and unhesitatingly without a pause a flow of rhetoric 
such as his predecessors never delivered in the same 
place. Those who came to scoff remained to praise. 

There were always some people who believed 
that he was nothing more than a splendid declaimer 
and that his lectures contained more poetry than 
philosophy. But those who studied with him knew 
how false was this estimate. One of his class, speak- 



164 Christopher North and his Friends 

ing of his thorough work, " There was a notion that 
he was there ' Christopher North ' and nothing else ; 
that you could get scraps of poetry, bits of sentiment, 
flights of fancy, flashes of genius, and anything but 
mo'ral philosophy. Nothing was further from the 
truth. In the very first lecture he cut into the core 
of the subject, raised the questioh which has always 
in this country been held to be the hardest and 
deepest in science (the origin of the moral faculty), 
and hammered at it through the greater part of the 
session. Even those who had a morbid appetite for 
swallowing hard and angular masses of logic found 
that the work here was quite stiff enough for any of 
us. It was not till his lectures on the Affections 
and the Imagination that he wandered freely over a 
more inviting field. 

Yes, " Wilson imported into the old university a 
prodigious accession of vital force. No academical 
automaton was he with pedantic tones grinding out 
the same dry formulae year by year. No round- 
shouldered, abstracted, bloodless recluse, utterly 
ignorant of life outside a library, and with about as 
much influence on his young audience as a mummy 
in a museum, or a last year's fly pressed in some 
musty encyclopedia — you have seen metaphysicians 
who had scarcely more life. Wilson was intensely 
human, and to young men whose hatred is hum- 
drum, whose delight is truth, courage, mastery, he 
was a daily inspiration. So profuse was the imagery, 
so brilliant the diction, so exciting, the passion that 



Christopher North and his Friends l65 

very dull must have been the clod that did not catch 
fire. Under the spell many found themselves think- 
ers, poets, and workers. It is matter for lasting 
regret that these lectures written on bits of papers 
and the backs of envelopes were not preserved to 
give solidity to his reputation. 

" His appearance in the class-room is far easier to 
remember than to forget. He strode into it with the 
professor's gown hanging loosely on his arms, took a 
comprehensive look over the mob of young faces, 
laid down his watch, so as to be out of the reach of 
his sledge-hammer fist, glanced at his notes, and 
then, to the bewilderment of those who had never 
heard him before, looked long and earnestly out of 
the north window towards the spire of the old Tron 
Kirk, until, having at last got his idea, he faced 
round and uttered it, with eye and hand and voice 
and soul and spirit, and bore the class along with 
him. . . 

"And occasionally in the finer frenzy of his more 
imaginative passages, as when he spoke of Alexan- 
der, clay-cold at Babylon, with the world lying con- 
quered round his tomb — or of the Highland hills 
that pour the rage of cataracts adown their riven 
cliffs — or of the human mind with its ' primeval 
granitic truths,' the grand old face flushed with the 
proud thought, and the eyes grew dim with tears, 
and the magnificent frame quivered with a universal 
emotion." 

You see how his undying enthusiasm permeated 



166 Christopher North and his Friends 

the minds of his audience. 'Tis a living power 
to-day. It was heart to heart as well as head to 
head, and his power was always the side of good 
in the lecture-room. But we must return to his 
literary life. In 1820, this announcement appeared 
in the book-lists : " In the Press — Lays from Fairy 
Land, by John Wilson, author of The Isle of 
Palms." This was never published. 

" Doth grief e'er sleep in a Fairy's breast? 
Are dirges sung in the land of Rest ? 
Tell us, when a fairy dies 
Hath she funeral obsequies ? 
Are all dreams there of woe and mirth 
That trouble and delight on earth ? " 

Lord Jeffrey said he was never tired of reading 
his description of a "Fairy's Funeral," which I will 
read : 

" There it was, on a little river island, that once, 
whether sleeping or waking, we know not, we saw 
celebrated a fairy's funeral. First we heard small 
pipes playing, as if no bigger than hollow rushes 
that whisper to the night winds, and more piteous 
than aught that trills from earthly instrument was 
the scarcely audible dirge. It seemed to float over 
the stream, every foaiji-bell emitting a plaintive 
note, till the fairy anthem came floating over our 
couch, and then alighting without footsteps on the 
heather. The pattering of little feet was then heard, 
as if living creatures were arranging themselves in 
order, and then there was nothing but a more 



Christopher North and his Friends 167 

ordered hymn. The harmony was like the melting 
of musical dewdrops, and sung without words of sor- 
row and death. 

" We opened our eyes, or rather sight came to 
them when closed, and dream was vision. 

" Hundreds of creatures, no taller than the crest 
of the lapwing, and all hanging down their veiled 
heads, stood in a circle on a green plat among the 
rocks ; and in the midst was a bier, framed, as it 
seemed, of flowers unknown to the Highland hills, 
and on the bier a fairy lying with uncovered face, 
pale as a lily and motionless as the snow. The dirge 
grew fainter and fainter, and then quite died away, 
when two of the creatures came from the circle and 
took their station, one at the head, the other at the 
foot of the bier. They sang alternate measures, not 
louder than the twittering of the awakened wood- 
lark before it goes up the dewy air, but dolorous 
and full of the desolation of death. The flower-bier 
stirred, for the spot on which it lay sank slowly 
down, and in a few moments the greensward was as 
smooth as ever, the very dews glittering above the 
buried fairy. A cloud passed over the moon, and 
with a choral lament the funeral troops sailed duskily 
away, heard afar off, so still was the midnight soli- 
tude of the glen. Then the disenthralled river 
began to rejoice as before, through all her streams 
and falls, and at the sudden leaping of the waters 
and outbursting of the moon we awoke." 

The home life of Wilson combined all that is best 
expressed in those words. 



168 Christopher North and his Friends 

Wife, children, pets, play through many of his 
essays. His wife's favorite plant was the myrtle ; 
we find it peeping out here and there in his writings. 
There, as everywhere, he was like no one else. On 
his library table, fishing rods found company with 
Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Jeremy Taylor reposed 
near a tin box of barley sugar, bank notes were 
stuffed, between books (he never could keep a purse), 
peeping out from the Fairy Queen were no end of 
delicately-dressed flies, and the sparrow hopping 
about, master of the situation. This little pet imag- 
ined itself the most important occupant of the room. 
It would nestle in his waistcoat, hop upon his shoulder, 
and seemed influenced by a constant association, 
for it grew in stature until it was alleged that the 
sparrow was gradually becoming an eagle. 

His love for animals was intense, and his favorites 
were, occasionally, a trial to the rest of the family, as, 
when his daughter found he had made a nest for 
some young game-cocks in her trunk of party dresses 
which was stored in the attic. \ 

He was unique in everything. When Professor 
Aytoun went to him to ask the hand of his daugh- 
ter, Wilson scribbled on a bit of paper, " With com- 
pliments of the author," and, pinning this to the 
sleeve of the blushing girl, led her to her happy 
lover. 

But death, relentless, inevitable, took the idolized 
wife suddenly, and the blow almost deprived Wil- 
son of reason for a time, and his sorrow was life- 



Christopher North and his Friends 169 

long-. When he first met his class after her loss, he 
was to decide on the merits of various essays which 
had been sent in on competition for a prize. He 
bowed low, and, in as firm voice as he could com- 
mand, apologized for not having examined the essays. 
" For," said he, "gentlemen, I could not see to read 
them in the darkness of the shadow of the valley of 
death." As he spoke, the tears rolled down his 
cheeks. He said no more, but waved his hand to his 
class, who stood up as he concluded and hurried out 
of the lecture room. 

Years after, when lecturing on Memory, he de- 
scribed the way in which a long-widowed husband 
would look back on happier days. His warm elo- 
quence held his audience enchained. At last, over- 
powered by his emotions, the old man stopped in 
mid career, and buried his head in his arms on the 
desk before him. For a minute, there was perfect 
stillness, but when Wilson again raised his head, and 
two big tears were seen rolling down his cheeks as 
he tried to go on, his voice was drowned in the loud 
cheers of the students. 

And if ever there was a woman worthy to be sor- 
rowed for through a lonely life, it was she. So 
opposite to the dazzling, impetuous spirit of her 
mate, in her beautiful gentleness and equanimity, 
and adapting herself so entirely to his tastes. 

This trial brought his spiritual nature into fuller 
action, and the tone of his writings was noticeably 
higher, his rough ways softened to a marked degree. 



170 Christopher North and his Friends 

His kindness to his grandchildren was beautiful. 
The very strength of his hand softened to gently 
caress the little child on his knee or clinging to his 
feet. A party in grandpa's room was such a treat. 
He would set the table with all sorts of goodies, then 
act as waiter and be ordered about in the most irrev- 
erent fashion. The greatest men have ever been the 
most simple in their home life, and Wilson did not 
think it beneath his dignity to play with Noah's 
ark, dolls, trumpets, and puzzles, to amuse the little 
folks, even going up stairs to the nursery for a for- 
gotten toy, or coming down stairs with his daughter's 
baby clutched by the back of her long robe, very 
much as a cat carries a kitten. 

Many daughters, from Fanny Burney, Lady Hol- 
land, Mary Dewey, Mrs. Lloyd, to Miss Bushnell, have 
been their father's biographers, a difficult task. 
Although we may not gain so just an idea of the 
character, who else could give the charming home 
pictures, the inner life, the little ways and daily hab- 
its that make one acquainted with the man. Mrs. 
Gordon says : " I would not, as a matter of taste, 
introduce an ordinary toilette to the attention of the 
reader, but with the professor this business was so 
like himself, so original, that it will amuse rather 
than offend. By fits and starts, the process of shav- 
ing was carried on — walking out of his dressing- 
room into the study, lathering his chin one moment, 
then standing the next to take a look at some frag- 
ment of a lecture, which would absorb his attention, 



Christopher North and his Friends 171 

until the fact of being without a coat and having his 
face covered with soap was entirely forgotten, then 
his waistcoat was put on ; after that, perhaps, he had 
a hunt among old letters and papers for the lecture 
now lost which a minute before he had in his hand. 
His watch was a great joke. In the first place he 
seldom wore his own, which never by any chance 
was right, or treated according to the natural proper- 
ties of a watch. Many wonderful escapes this orna- 
ment had from fire, water, and sudden death. He 
says : " We wound up our chronometer irregularly, 
by fits and starts, thrice a day, perhaps, or once a 
week, till it fell into an intermittent fever, grew 
delirious, and gave up the ghost." He had a curious 
way of mislaying things, even that broad-brimmed 
hat of his sometimes went a missing, his snuff-box, 
his gloves, his pocket-handkerchief, everything, 
just at the moment he wished to be off to his class, 
became invisible." 

It is pleasant to record a pension of 300 pounds 
from the Queen and a reconciliation with Jeffrey. 
Wilson was quick-tempered, but never malignant, 
and his character was beautifully softened by the 
hand of time. The last years I do not like to dwell 
upon — when the massive frame drooped sadly, and 
the magnificent mind was clouded, and books were 
opened only to be closed, their meaning gone for 
him. The yellow locks were tinged with gray ; 
" the old man of the lion heart and scepter crutch " 
was fast passing away. In second childhood he went 



172 Christopher North and his Friends 

back with the old delight of angling. For my last 
picture see him propped up in bed absorbed with 
the relics of a youthful passion. Taking out each 
elegantly dressed fly from its little bunch, drawing 
it with trembling hand along the white coverlet, 
then replacing it in his pocketbook, he would tell of 
the streams he used to haunt. 

Paraylsis came in the spring of 1853, a blessed 
release, and on Sunday, at midnight, his heart was 
still. Writing of his dying liour years before, he said: 
" May that hour find me in my weeping home, 'mid 
the blest stillness of a Sabbath day ; may none I 
deeply love be then away." 

An answered prayer. And if our dear ones can 
return to guide us to the new life, his wife, I am 
sure, was very near him, though unseen. Wilson 
loved America, and wanted to visit us. After our 
famous men, he desired to see Niagara ; not unlike 
Niagara himself. And how ]ie could have described 
it. 

Some wise heads mourn that Wilson did not con- 
centrate his genius, distinguish himself in one direc- 
tion. He might have been the greatest preacher of 
the age, or the greatest actor of the day, or a power- 
ful parliamentary orator, or a marvelous dramatist. 
He had powers that might make him in literature 
the very first man of his generation. Masson com- 
pares him to a Goth, much of whose powers went to 
waste, for want of stringent self-regulation. 

Yes ; but can you harness the lightning that 



Christopher North and his Friends 173 

flashes in zigzag splendor on a summer night ? Bril- 
liant, fitful, fascinating, Wilson had to be himself, 
and those who know him best find no cause to grieve. 

It is noticeable that in estimating or describing 
Wilson, there is a natural cumulation of epithets, 
and more compound words and compound adjectives 
coined for the occasion have been applied to him 
than any other character in literature. 

Maginn, a witty but dissipated Irish genius of 
that time, gives this off-hand picture : " A corker, a 
racer, a six-bottler, a twenty-four tumblerer, an out- 
and-outer, a true, upright, knocking-down, poetical, 
prosaic, moral, professional, good-looking, honorable, 
straight-forward tory ; a gipsy, a magician, a wit, a 
six-foot club man, an unflinching ultra in the worst 
of times. In what was he not great " ? And irresist- 
ibly carried along, I exclaim : " Dreamer, doer, poet, 
philosopher, simple child, wisest patriarch," hospita- 
ble friend, husband-lover, doting father, boisterous 
wit, rollicking humorist, master of pathos, practical 
joker, sincere mourner, such was the man Christo- 
pher North. A Hercules Apollo, strong and immor- 
tally beautiful, whom, with all his faults and foibles, 
we stop to admire and stay to love. 



THE OLD MIRACLE PLAYS. 



This essay on the " Old Miracle Plays " was pre- 
pared for my New York friends when Salmi Morse 
was threatening to bring- out a " Passion Play " in 
that city. As few have the time to look up the his- 
tory of these plays from the beginning, the result qf 
my researches may still be interesting. Remember 
that what seems to us irreverent was once true wor- 
ship. 

In the year 1633, when the village of Oberam- 
mergau was visited by a devastating plague, the 
Monks of Ettal induced the parish to make a vow 
" That in thankful devotion and for edifying con- 
templation, they would every ten years publicly rep- 
resent the Passion of Jesus the Saviour of the World." 
Whereupon the parish was immediately freed from 
the pestilence. 

We are all familiar with the " Passion Play," as 
represented with simplicity and reverence by these 
Bavarian peasants. We have had lectures and let- 
ters, stereopticon views, vivid word pictures from 
friends who have witnessed it, and books giving the 
entire performance, enriched with photographs of 
the actors, are familiar to many. 

It is an entirely different matter to propose to 
reproduce with an entirely different motive this 



The Old Miracle Plays 175 

remnant of the middle ages in a modern theater. It 
would then become a blasphemous mummery — a 
spectacular sacrilege — a sin akin to that of Judas, 
and the clergy, the press, and the voice of the people 
forbade it. Studying the subject, I found an immense 
amount of material. In the Boston public library 
alone, there are 132 volumes on the "Miracle Plays" 
in various languages. 

We might start with Thespis and his portable 
stage, 535 B. C. or at a still earlier date, but I do not 
intend to ransack Greece and Rome for a history of 
the drama, or discuss the vexed questions of the 
necessity for scenic representations in every age and 
race.' We see children perpetually acting in their 
plays and the childhood of nations is like that of 
individuals. There always has been and always will 
be a longing for theatrical excitement ; we may say 
it is dangerous, wicked, must be put down ! People 
will still flock to a good comedy, will still take real 
pleasure in most heart-rending tragedies. 

In country villages and hamlets, the good wives 
find food for this natural appetite in the woes of 
their neighbors. Romance and tragedy are as busy in 
the farmhouse as the palace, and these stories of sen- 
timent and sorrow are made common property and 
satisfy the eager craving for excitement. Now and 
then a hopeful clergyman, or an enthusiastic but in- 
experienced playwright, or a woman ignorant of 
what she is talking about, and (for that reason talk- . 
ing all the louder) will say that the pulpit and theater 



1 76 The Old Miracle Plays 

must go hand in hand, and dream of not exactly- 
combining, but running them on a double track. You 
can easily see how it niigJit be done, if ministers 
would only study the actor's art of impressing and 
holding an audience (throwing in a few timely 
lessons in elocution), and the actors — • etc., etc., but it 
will never be done. 

Curious fact, that the drama started in the church, 
religion, in all countries, first excited dramatic repre- 
sentations ; the acts are closely connected ; all blood 
relations — they began in worship. Family quarrels 
are invariably the most violent, which perhaps ac- 
counts for a part of the hostility between priests and 
actors. 

Let me give here a bit from Monsieur Coguelius' 
book on " Actors and their Art." 

" In the church the theater was born with myste- 
ries and miracle plays, and our brothers of the ' Pas- 
sion Play ' are the direct ancestors of the Theatre 
Francais. 

"In those days, church and theater fraternized. 
The scenic directions prove it, heaven above with its 
different divisions parted off in true hierarchic order, 
and the awful gulf of hell yawning below. 

" How does it happen that the church, so mater- 
nally inclined towards mysteries and miracle plays, 
has picked so bitter a quarrel with us since ? 

" Actors have been canonized by the church ; the 
church refused to bury Moliere in consecrated ground. 
Now the church consents to bury us, perhaps with 
pleasure.'' 



The Old Miracle Plays 177 

Lecky, in his History of Rationalism, says that 
" Every one who considers the world as it really 
exists and not as it appears in the writings of ascetics 
or sentimentalists, must have convinced himself that 
in great towns where multitudes of men of all classes 
and characters are massed together, and where there 
are innumerable strangers separated from all domes- 
tic ties and occupations, public amusements of an 
exciting order are absolutely necessary," and refers 
to the drama as of immense importance in the intel- 
lectual history of mankind, one of the most conspic- 
uous signs of a rising civilization, combining the 
three great influences of eloquence, poetry, and of 
painting, the seed-plot of poetry and romance. 

" The church adopted the drama as her hand- 
maid. Demanding that men should dispense with 
and despise the pleasures of the world, she must her- 
self minister to the natural demands of humanity 
and provide attractions in her own domain." 

The church (says Van Laun in his " History of 
French Literature ") was, in fact, the chib of the 
middle ages, always open, peaceful, cheerful, and 
usually entertaining. 

The majority of the people did not understand 
the language of prayer and hymn, their hearts must 
be reached through the bodily senses. 

The first Christian drama was a gesture. It was 
by a succession of gestures that the priests illus- 
trated and interpreted their dead-letter of devotion. 
On Ascension days a priest stood in his surplice 



178 The Old Miracle Plays 

on the outer gallery of the Notre Dame, and with 
outstretched arms represented the assumption of 
Christ into Heaven. On the feast of Pentecost a 
dove figured the presence of the Holy Ghost, whilst 
tongues of fire descended from the roof of the 
church. At Easter, three men dressed in white 
robes, with hoods on their heads, a silver flask of 
consecrated oil in their hands, interpreted the story 
of the three Marys proceeding to the sepulchre, 
whilst a fourth, in the form of an angel, announced 
to them the resurrection of the Lord. At Christmas, 
the infant Jesus was shown in his manger, the 
youngest choristers playing the parts of angels 
from the galleries. 

Little by little, by gradual growth, came rich 
costumes, stage properties, till we see the full- 
fledged ecclesiastical drama, acted in church and at 
the church doors. 

" The Mystery of Adam," the work of a priest in 
the 1 2th century, was one of the first to be played at 
the church porch. The scene opens showing the 
Saviour in an embroidered dalmatic ; Adam, standing 
before him dressed in a red tunic, attentive to his 
commands ; Eve, with bowed head, dressed in a 
long white robe, with a veil of spotless silk ; Satan, 
in serpent's garb, crawled about the stage, and up 
the trunk of the forbidden tree. After our first 
parents had been expelled from Paradise, Satan 
busies himself with sowing thistles and briers. 
When the dejected couple return and see the teasing 



The Old Miracle Plays 179 

work of their enemy they express their despair by 
rolling on the ground. 

In another play, a German mystery, Cain and 
Abel are brought before the Lord by Adam to be 
examined as to their proficiency in the Lord's 
prayer. Abel, prompted by the Saviour, gets 
through respectably, but Cain, instigated by the 
devil, says the prayer backwards, and is flogged, 
after having received a severe cuff from his father, 
for not taking his hat off ! 

From the earliest times men have been accus- 
tomed to throw into dramatic forms the objects 
of their belief, and the pagan mysteries, which were 
essentially dramatic, retained their authority over 
the popular mind long after every other portion of 
the ancient worship was despised. 

The first Biblical play on record is on Moses, 
and is the composition of a Jew named Ezekiel, who 
lived in the 2d century. They were written in 
Latin until the latter part of the 13th century, and 
were usually acted by priests in the churches. As 
they grew more popular they brought religion into 
disrepute by their indecency and irreverence. But 
in this form they prepared the way for the Reforma- 
tion. 

The first recorded development of the JNIiracle 
play was in France in the nth century, but soon all 
German and Latin nations shared the same impulse. 

At first, undertaken by the priests to instruct the 
people, but afterwards the people themselves took all 
but the most important parts. 



180 The Old Miracle Plays 

Called " miracle " plays because they represented 
the miracles or narrated some wonder of the Chris- 
tian faith, or any story in Scripture or the Apoc- 
rypha. Sometimes a whole town undertook a play, 
then a solemn trumpet-call summoned those who 
wished to join for the honor of Christ or the good of 
their souls. Each swore on pain of death to care- 
fully study their role and not fail to appear. No 
entrance money was paid, but expenses made up by 
voluntary gifts. 

Sometimes the performance was carried on from 
Creation to the Judgment and lasted for several 
days, one even twenty-five days, in the open air and 
fair weather. 

But the miracle plays required a stage of three 
stories. The topmost Paradise, of course. In that 
were the Trinity, the saints, and angels. 

It was carefully adorned with tapestry and 
shaded by green trees, which appeared to blossom 
and emit sweet odors. 

Below was Hell. The opening and shutting of 
the mouth of an enormous dragon represented the 
jaws of Hell, or the dragon was painted on linen, 
with great open jaws, opened and shut by men, and 
a light behind to give the effect of flames, and one 
of the stage directors of long ago remarked that 
when the devil has carried off a soul, there shall be 
a great noise made with pans and kettles, so that it 
shall be heard without, also a great smoke shall be 
made. 



The Old Miracle Plays 181 

In Germany, Paradise was generally at one end 
of the stage, slightly raised, while the devil had only 
a large cask, in and out of which he could spring, 
while another served as the mountain of the Temp- 
tation. 

All the players came on the stage at once ; even 
the ass and the cock which crowed for Peter had 
their places. Each actor was supposed to be invisible 
till he received his cue and stood forth. Each when 
he first appeared must state what he represented, 
and as the art of shifting scenes was unknown, a 
notice in large letters indicated here a hill and there 
a grove, etc. 

The dress, at first the ordinary priest's gown, 
became fantastic to suit the people. The condemned 
souls were supposed to wear no clothes, but some- 
times compromised or indicated the fact by wearing 
tight-fitting shirts. 

The stage tricks were of the simplest order. In 
one play Judas was to be hanged in due form by 
•Beelzebub. 

" The devil must take care of the fastening and 
sit behind on the bar of the gallows. Judas was to 
carry concealed in his coat a blackbird and the 
entrails of some animal, so that when his coat was 
torn the effect should be impressive. Then both 
slid down to the lower regions on a slanted rope." 

The miracle play was very seriously regarded by 
the actors as well as by the spectators. It was the 
custom before commencing that the whole troupe 



182 The Old Miracle Plays 

kneeling on the stage should sing the hymn, " Veni 
Creator Spiritus," either in Latin or their own lan- 
guage, and close with a Te Deum. 

In France, as well as in Italy, it was on the 
boards of private theatres that the first glimmering 
of the drama appears. Voltaire, with an unusual fit 
of charity, vindicated the scriptural dramas of this 
early period from the charges of absurdity brought 
against them, assuring us they were performed with 
a solemnity not unworthy of their sacred subjects. 

The priests became jealous of their showy com- 
petitors. Many of these miracle plays perished with 
their age, many were burned in the monasteries 
destroyed by Henry VIII, some remain amid the 
dust of old libraries. Horace Walpole had a rare 
collection at Strawberry Hill. 

In Longland's Piers Ploughman's Crede, about 
the middle of 14th century, we find two lines from a 
friar : 

" We haunt no tavei-ns, nor hobble about, 
At markets and miracles we meddle us never." , 

Chaucer has many allusions to these religious 
dramas, and he speaks of the wife of Bath amusing 
herself with these fashionable diversions while her 
husband is absent in London during Lent. 

" Therefore made I my visitations 
To vigils and to processions, 
To preachings eke, and to these pilgrimages, 
To plays of miracles and to marriages, 
And wore my gay scarlet giles." 



The Old Miracle Plays 183 

As in Greek worship, we find mysterious awe and 
daring jest closely connected. Sharply defined con- 
trasts were enjoyed by the people and the comic by- 
play, absolutely necessary during several days of 
solemn representation, took nothing from their 
devout spirit. 

Much that we find objectionable is only a mode 
of expression to which we are not accustomed. A 
mediaeval na'ivette or uncouthness which meant noth- 
ing wrong. So the devil at first a frightful being 
became at length a comic personage in satyr-like 
masquerade, and his associate, Vice, was a witty fool, 
behaving almost exactly like our clown of the 
modern circus. 

As the excruciating hand-organ is all that is left 
as a type of minstrelsy. Harlequin and Punch and 
Judy are supposed to have had this origin. 

The devil was usually represented with horns, a 
very wide mouth (by means of a mask), staring eyes, 
a large nose, a red beard, cloven feet, a tail, and 
furnished with a stout club. His appearance and 
manner excited both awe and mirth, which Hudson 
gives as the germs of tragedy and comedy. Some- 
times he had a protean versatility of mind and per- 
son, so that he could walk abroad as " plain devil," 
scaring all he met, or steal into society as a prudent 
counselor, an lago-like friend, a dashing beau, or 
whatever was best for his purpose. 

No play now is complete unless the devil makes 
his entree in the guise of a rough or a gentlemanly 



184 The Old Miracle Plays 

villain, or a snaky, seductive woman. Vice was a 
comic fool, full of mad pranks and saucy jokes. 
And we are all pretty much like Gossip Tattle's 
spouse in Ben Jonson's " Staple of News," who says, 
" My husband, Timothy Tattle, rest his poor soul, 
was wont to say there was no play without a fool 
and a devil in't ; he was for the devil still, bless 
him ! The devil for Jiis money, he would say ; I 
would fain see the devil." 

Vice was a droll character accoutered with a long 
coat, a cap, a pair of ass's ears, and a dagger of lath. 
This buffoon used to make fun with the devil, and 
he had several trite expressions as, "I'll be with you 
in a trice," " Ah hah, boy, are you there ? " And 
this was a great entertainment to the audience to see 
their old enemy so belabored in effig3\ He was the 
devil's "vice" or prime minister, and this is what 
made him so saucy. 

Of all the persons who figured in the miracle 
plays, Herod, the Slayer of the Innocents, was the 
greatest favorite. We hear of him from Chaucer, 
who says of the Parish clerk, Absalom : 

" Sometime, to show his Hghtness and maistrie, 
He plaieth H erode on a scaffold hie." 

He was always represented as an immense 

swearer and braggart and swaggerer, ranting and 

raving up and down the stage, with furious bombast 

and profanity. In one of the Chester series he says : 

" For I am king of all mankind: 
I bid, I beat, I loose, I bind : 



The Old Miracle Plays 185 

I master the moon ! Take this in mind, 

That I am most of might, 

I am the greatest above degree, 

That is, that was, or ever shall be ; 

The sun it dare not shine on me, 

An I bid him go down." 

And in one of the Coventry series : 

" Of beauty and of boldness I bear evermore the bell ; 
Of main and of might, I master every man ; 
I ding with my doughtiness the devil down to Hell ; 
For both of heaven and of earth, I am king, certain." 

Termagant, the supposed god of the Saracens, 
was another staple character in the miracle plays, 
also a great boaster, quarreller, killer, tamer of the 
universe, child of the earthquake, and the brother of 
death. That Shakespeare had suffered, as Hudson 
says, " under the monstrous din of these strutting 
and bellowing stage-thumpers is shown by Hamlet's 
remonstrance with the players : 

" O it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious, periwig- 
pated fellow tear a passion to rags, to very tatters, to split the 
ears of the groundlings : I would have such a fellow whipped for 
o'erdoing Termagant ; it out-Herods Herod : pray you — avoid it." 

We also find material for the rest of his speech, 
as the players were instructed to speak with dignity 
and appropriate gestures — neither to cut off or add 
a syllable, and to pronounce in a distinct manner. 

Regarded from an artistic point of view, the Eng- 
lish Miracle plays are the best, have greater anima- 



186 The Old Miracle Plays 

tion and skill in action, essentially epic, and they 
give a good idea of the manners, customs, and degree 
of progress of the English at that time. And, 
as prayers were in an unknown tongue, sermons 
few, and printing uninvented, they furnished almost 
all the religious knowledge. They are divided into 
the Chester, Coventry, York, and Townely series, 
named from the towns where they originated. The 
mayor of York decreed that the solemn play of 
Corpus Christi should be played every year, that the 
procession should appear on the day of said feast, so 
that people being in the said city might have leisure 
to attend devoutly the matins, vespers, and other 
hours of the said feast. And that men of crafts and 
all other men that find torches come forth in array. 
This festival of Corpus Christi was instituted by 
Pope Urban IV, to support the doctrine of- transub- 
stantiation. Here is a portion of the order of the 
pageants of the play of Corpus Christi : 

Tanners. God the Father Almighty creating and 
forming the heavens, angels, and archangels, Lucifer, 
and the angels that fell with him into Hell. 

Carde Makers. God the Father creating Adam of 
the slime of the earth, and making Eve of the rib, 
and inspiring them with the spirit of life. 

ShipzvrigJits. God foretelling Noah to make an 
ark of light wood. 

The Chester plays consist of twenty-four dramas, 
and annually performed till 1577, each trade taking 
one theme, as, 



The Old Miracle Plays 187 

The Deluge, by the Dyers. 

Shepherds feeding- their flocks by night. 

Painters and Glaciers. 

The Temptation, by the Butchers. 

The Last Supper, by the Bakers. 

The Descent into Hell, by the Cooks. 

The Resurrection, by the Skinners, 

The Ascension, by the Tailors. 

Ezekiel, by the Clothiers. 

Henry V was seen there with his retinue. Queen 
Margaret came from Kilyngworth. 

FysJimongers and Mariners. Noah in the ark with 
his wife and three children, and divers animals. 

Biikbynders. Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac, 
a ram, bush, and angel 

Lance Makers. Judas hanging himself. 

Weavers of Woolen. Mary ascending with a mul- 
titude of angels. Eight Apostles with Thomas 
preaching in the desert. 

The accounts of the various guilds contain entries 
of sums paid for machinery, dresses, etc., throwing 
light on the way in which these pageants were rep- 
resented : "Herod's crest of iron, faulchion for, 
Herod, 2 spears ; a staff for the demon, God's coat of 
white leather, 6 skins ; 2 mitres for Cayphas and 
Annas ; 4 gowns and 4 swords for the tormentors ; 
poleage for Pilate's son." 

In the expenses for 1490, verbatim, we find that 
even the spirit of God was sometimes represented on 



188 The Old Miracle Plays 

the stage in human figure, although usually depicted 
as a dove : 

Item paide to the sprytt of God, xvi d, 
" " " angelles, viii d. 

" " " demon, xvi d. 

pd to Fawston for hanging Judas, iiizd. 
COG. croyng, iiizd. 

Item for mendynge the develles cote. 

To a peynter for peyntyng Herod's face. 

New coats for the souls. 

To black souls and white souls. 

These pure and sinful souls were distinguished 
by black and white coats. How the " womes of con- 
science " played their parts I have failed to discover. 
Hell's mouth needed frequent repairs, and, on one 
occasion, mention is made of expenses consequent on 
the conflagration of hell itself. Some of the entries 
are droll enough, as 

"Paid for mending the wind, ix d." The winds 
appear to have been worked by ropes. 

" Paid for a new rope for the wind, i6 d." 

We see again 

"Paid for 15 pairs of angels' wings." 

And 

" Item paid for mending hell-mouth, and for 
keeping of fire at hell-mouth." 

And in 1558 

" Payd for setting the world of fire, v d. 

" Item, a hat for Pilate." 

" For mending the devil's head." 



The Old Miracle Plays 189 

Suits were occasionally borrowed, as we learn : 

" Item to reward Mistress Grymesby for lending 
of her gear for Pilates wife, 12 d." 

From a few stage directions scattered here and 
there through the manuscripts of the mysteries now 
extant, it would appear that the stage machinery 
by which a part of the effect was produced, must 
have been elaborate, both ingenious and expensive. 
The collective paraphernalia of acting, the stage, 
actors, and stage machinery were called a pageant. 
The players received liberal wages ; handsome young 
men took the part of women. Independent of a 
liberal allowance of food they consumed almost in- 
credible quantities of beer at rehearsals, at intervals 
in performances, and every corner on the street 
where the pageant happened to stop. 

Each guild had its own pageant, and performed 
its own play at its own expense. For instance, " The 
Hall of Lucifer," was always performed b}^ tanners. 
Their stage, on a large wagon, was drawn early in 
the morning in front of the gates of the Abbey, then 
wheeled to the High Cross in front of the mayor's 
house, and so through the different streets. The 
wagons of the various guilds separated at the ap- 
pointed places of exhibition, and every compan)'- or 
trade repeated its own play at all the important sta- 
tions, so that the populace could see the grand dis- 
play. These were performed at Easter, Whitsuntide, 
or Christmas. 



190 The Old Miracle Plays 

These plays sometimes lasted eight days, and 
were announced some time before by a herald in 
what was called " The Proemium " or prologue, giv- 
ing to each guild their task with earnest appeals to 
each to do their best, with " good speech, fine play- 
ers, and apparel comely," ending: 

" A Sunday next, if that we maj^ 
At VI of the belle, we gynne our play 
In Noman town wherefore we pray 
That God now be your spede. Amen." 

THE PROEMIUM. 

Reverende lordes and ladyes all, 

That at this tyme here assembled bee. 

By this messeinge understande you shall, 

That some tymes there was mayor of this citie 

Sir John Amvay, Knighte, who moste worthelye 

Contented hymselfe to sett out in playe 

The devise of one Dove Rondall, moonke of Chester Abbey. 

This moonke, moonke-like in Scriptures well seen, 

In storyes travelled with the beste sorte, 

In pagentes set fourth apparently to all ej'ne, 

The olde andnewe Testament, with livelye comforth, 

Interminglinge therewith, onely to make sporte, 

Some thinges, not warranted by any weilt, 

Which to gladd the hearers he woulde me'n to take yt. 

This matter he abbrevited with playes twenty-four. 

And every playe of the matter gave but a taste, 

Leavinge for better learninge the scircumstance to accomplishe. 

For all his proceedings maye appear to be in hasti, 

Yet altogether unprofitable his labor he did not wasti, 

For at this daye and ever he deserveth the fame 

Which all monkes deserves, professinge that name. 



The Old Miracle Plays 191 

This worth 5^^ Knighti Amvay, then mayor of this citie, 

This order toke, as declare to you I shall, 

That by twentye-four occupations, artes, craftes, or misterie 

These pagentes shoulde be played, after breef rehearsall. 

For every pagente, a cariage to be provyded withaU ; 

In which sorte, we porpose, this Whitsontyde, 

Our pageantes into three partes to divide. 

Nowe, you worshippfuU tanners that of custome olde 
The fall of Lucifer did set out, 

Some writers awarrante your matter theirfore be boulde, 
Ersletye to play the same to all the vorowtte. 

Your shew-let-bee 
Good speech, fyne pjayers, with appariellcomelye, 

Of the drapers you the wealthy companye 

The creation of the worlde. Adam and Eve, 

According to your wealth, set out wealthilye 

And howe Cayne his brother Abell, his life did bereave. 

The good, symple water leaders and drawers of Dee 

See that your ark in all poyntes be prepared ; 

Of Noe and his children the whoU storye 

And of the universall floude, by you shall be played. 



Cappers and lynnen drapers, see that you forth bring, 
In well decked order, that worthy storie. 
Of Balaam and his asse, and of Balaak the king 
ilake the asse to speak and sett yt out livelye. 

The sacred dramas at Coventiy drew immense 
multitudes, and the exhibitions were patronized by 
royalty. 

Henry V was seen there with his retinue. 
Queen Margaret came from Killingworth, having 



192 The Old Miracle Plays 

with her lords and ladies. Richard III honored the 
Corpus Christi plays, also Henry VII. Before the 
suppression of the monasteries, the Grey Friars of 
Coventry were celebrated for their exhibitions on 
Corpus Christi day, their pageants being acted with 
mighty state and reverence in theaters placed on 
wheels and drawn to all the important streets of the 
city. 

Queen Elizabeth was particularly fond of pa- 
geants of all kinds and was often entertained by 
miracle plays. 

Carew, a writer of her time, said that for repre- 
senting the Scripture history they raised an amphi- 
theater in some open field, with a diameter of 50 
feet. The country people flock from all sides many 
miles off, to see and hear it ; for they have therein 
devils and devices to delight the eye as the ear. 

Yet all was not splendor and amusement in the 
lives of the mystery-players. The profession of an 
actor, even in those days, was a laborious one. The 
great parts, those that were the most ardently 
sought after, imposed a degree of toil and fatigue on 
those who accepted them whereof few men would 
be capable to-day. For instance, Christ, in certain 
of the passion plays had over 4,000 lines to recite, 
and the crucifixion on the stage, as was remarked, 
lasted as long as in the reality. The actor, sus- 
pended to the cross in a state of almost total nudity, 
recited in that situation some 300 or 400 lines. In 
1437 the cure, Nicolle, while impersonating the 



The Old Miracle Plays I93 

Saviour in a passion play, came near dying on the 
cross in good earnest, from sheer fatigue and ex- 
haustion. In the same play the representative of 
Judas hung himself in such a realistic fashion that 
he became insensible, and was nearly dead when 
taken down, so that his fellow-actors were forced to 
"carry him into a neighboring spot, there to rub 
him with vinegar and other restoratives." Some- 
times the parts, when of great length, were played 
by three or four actors each, and this was especially 
the case when the personage to be represented was 
shown at different stages of his or her career. 
Thus, three actors were often charged with the role 
of the Holy Virgin, one impersonating her as a 
child, another as a young girl, and the third as a 
woman of mature age. 

The last miracle play represented in England 
was that of " Christ's Passion," in the reign of James 
ist, on Good Friday, at night, at which there were 
thousands present. 

The people of the Middle Ages from the very 
fact that their existence was more monotonous than 
that of the people of the present day, were all the 
more ready to seize an opportunity for amusement, 
and the solemn representations of the mysteries 
were among their most cherished enjoyments. The 
entrance of the king or queen into a town, the birth 
of a prince or princess, the court festivals, as well as 
the ecclesiastical solemnities, and the feasts of the 
church, were an excuse for these popular spectacles. 



194 The Old Miracle Plays 

The representations, prepared a long time before- 
hand, were announced by the public crier, like the 
royal and municipal decrees, at the most frequented 
places of the town. The spectators, who did not 
have to pay anything- for witnessing the play, did 
not seat themselves promiscuously, but each person 
according to his rank and station. The nobles or 
dignitaries occupied platforms, upon which, as the 
representations lasted a long time, they sometimes 
had their meals served, like the old Romans, upon 
the balconies of the amphitheater or circus. The 
lower classes occupied places, either seated or stand- 
ing, upon the bare earth or the pavement, as the 
case might be, the men being to the right and the 
women to the left, the same as in church. The 
local clergy, in order to let their congregations have 
an opportunity of witnessing the whole spectacle, 
advanced or put back the hour of service. In fact, 
the fondness of the public for these spectacles was so 
great that the houses were left almost deserted, and 
armed watchmen paced the silent streets to protect 
the property of the inhabitants, while the represent- 
ation was taking place. No permanent theaters at 
that time. 

Geo. McDonald finds a good deal of poetic worth 
scattered through these plays, and quotes a scene 
from the " Fall of Man." 

Here are parts of Eve's lamentation when con- 
scious of the death that has laid hold upon her : 



The Old Miracle Plays 195 

' ' Alas that ever that speech was spoken 

That the false angel said unto me ! 
Alas ! our maker's bidding is broken, 

For I have touched his own dear tree. 
Our fleshly eyes are all unlokyn, 

Naked for sin ourself we see ; 
That sorry apple that we have tokyn, 

To death hath brought my spouse and me." 

When the voice of God is heard saying : 

" Adam, that with my hands I made. 
Where art thou now ? What hast thou wrought ? " 

Adam replies in two lines, containing the whole 
truth of man's spiritual condition ever since : 

' ' Ah Lord I for sin our flowers do fade ; 
I hear thy voice, but I see thee nought." 

Notice the quaint simplicity of the words of God 

to the woman : 

" Unwise woman, say me why 
That thou hast done this foul folly. 
And I made thee a great lady 
In Paradise for to play ? " 

Eve laments bitterly, and at length offers her 
throat to her husband, praying him to strangle her : 

' ' Now stumble we on stalk and stone ; 
My wit away from me has gone ; 
Writhe on to my neck-bone 
With hardness of thine hand." 

Adam replies : 

' ' Wife, thy wit is not worth a rush ! " 



196 The Old Miracle Plays 

The scene ends with these words from Eve : 

"Alas that ever we wrought this sin ! 
Our bodily sustenance for to win, 
Ye must delve and I shall spin, 
In care to lead our life." 

In the " Woman Taken in Sin " there is a 
remarkable tradition that each of the woman's 
accusers, Scribes and Pharisees, thought Jesus was 
writing his individual sins on the ground. 

The Accuser — 

" Alas for sorrow mine heart doth bleed. 
All my sins yon man did write ; 
If that my fellows to them took heed, 
I cannot me from death acquite, 
I would I were hid somewhere out of sight. 
That men I should me nowhere see nor know, 
If I be taken I am aflyght, 
In mekyl shame I shall be throne." 

Two volumes of the ancient Cornish drama 
exist, in Celtic dialect, once spoken in Cornwall, and 
of greater merit than all the other remains of the 
language taken together ; its antiquity is its chief 
value. 

Subjects, as usual : 

The Beginning of the World. 

Passion of Our Lord. 

Resurrection, 

Then God the Father shall go to heaven, and 
afterwards the devil, like a serpent, speaks to Eve in 
the tree of knowledge, and he says wickedly to Eve : 



The Old Miracle Plays 197 

Eve, why dost thou not come near ? 

To speak with me and talk ? 

One thing which I know if thou knewest it, 

It would amuse thee, 

Forever thou wouldst laugh 

For joy and for mirth. 
As thou camest into the world, 
To heaven thou wouldst ascend. 

Eve. 

What thing can that be 
Tell me directly. 

Devi . 

From heaven I come now. 
Sweet Eve, to better thy condition. 
The fruit of the tree of knowledge, 
Eat, never make a difficulty. 

Eve. 

I am outside (puzzled) thinking 

What I may do 

As to plucking the apple 

For fear of being deceived by thee. 

At last she gathers the apple and carries it to 
Adam, saying : 

Adam, reach me thy hand : / 

Take that from me. 

Quietly without blowing thy horn. 

Eat it immediately. 

Adam. 

Speak to me, thou woman. 
Where didst thou gather the fruit ? 
Was it of that same sort 
Which was forbidden to us ? 



198 The Old Miracle Plays 

Eve. 

When I was walking about 

I heard on one side 

An angel beginning to sing 

Above me on the tree, 

He did advise me 

That I should gather fruit from it ; 

Greater than God we should be, 

Nor be troubled forever. 

Adam. 

Oh ! out upon thee, wicked woman. 
That thou listenedst to him. 
For he was an evil bird 
Whom thou didst hear singing. 
And will bring us to sorrow 
Unless we do refrain. 
Let every one think on the end of it 
How it can end. 

Eve. 

Since thou wilt not believe, 

Thou shalt lose my love 

Ever whilst thou livest, 

Here thou shalt not see me again. 

Eve, rather than thou be angry, 
I will do all as thou wishest, 
Bring it to me immediately 
And I will eat it. 

Madam D. Arblay has an interesting account of 
an interview with an entertaining Mr. Bryant, who, 
after giving two or three amusing anecdotes such as 
the comic slip-slops of the first Lord Baltimore who 



The Old Miracle Plays 199 

said, " I have been upon a little excoriation to see a 
ship lanced, and there is not a finer going vessel 
upon the face of God's yearth ; you've no idiom how- 
well it sailed," spoke next of the mysteries or origin 
of our theatrical entertainments, and repeated the 
plan and conduct of several of those strange compo- 
sitions, in particular one he remembered which was 
called " Noah's Ark," and in which that patriarch 
and his sons, just previous to the deluge, made it all 
their delight to speed themselves into the ark zvitli- 
oiit Mrs. Noah, whom they wished to escape ; but 
she surprised them just as they had embarked, and 
made so prodigious a racket against the door that 
after a long and violent contention she forced them 
to open it, and gained admission, having first con- 
tented them by being kept out till she was thor- 
oughly wet to the skin. These most eccentric and 
unaccountable dramas filled up the chief of our 
conversation, and whether to consider them most 
with laughter, as ridiculous, or with horror, as blas- 
phemous, remains a doubt I cannot well solve. 

Noah is, the type of a henpecked husband, and his 
wife of a loud-voiced shrew, in all the plays I have 
seen. 

A CHESTER PLAY. 

THE DELUGE. 

Manne that I made, I will destroy ; 

Beast, worme, andfoule to flie, 
For on earth they doe me noye 

The foike yt is thereon. 



200 The Old Miracle Plays 

For it harmes me so hartfuUie 
The malyce now that can multiply, 

That sore me greves, inwardlie, 
That ever I made manne. 

Therefore, Noe, my servant free. 
That righteous man art, as I see, 

A shipp sone thou shalt make the 
Of trees drye and light. 

'Destroyed all the world shall be 

Save thou, thy wife, thy sonnes three 
And all their wives, also with the, 
Shall saved be for thy sake. 

Noe. 

Ah, Lord ! I thank the lowd and still. 

That to me art in such will ; 

And spares me and my house to spill, 

As now I and othlie find. 
Thy bydding. Lord, I shall fulfill. 
And never more the greeve, ne grill. 
That suche grace has sent me till 

Among all mankinde. 

Have done you men and women all ; 
Helpe, for ought that may befall. 
To worke this shipp, chamber and hall, 
As God hath bydden us doe. 

Sem. 

Father, I am already bowne, 
Anne axe I have, by my crowne, 
As sharpe as any in all this towne. 
For to goe thereto. 



The Old Miracle Plays 201 

Ham. 
I have a hatchet wonder kene, 
To byte well, as may be seene 
A better grounder, as I wene, 
Is not in all this towne. 

Japhet. 
And I can well make a pyn, 
And with this hammer knocke it in ; 
Goe and worche, without more dyme. 
And I am ready bowne. 

Wife of Noah. 
And we shall bring timber, too, 
For women nothing els doe ; 
Women be weak to undergoe, 
Any great travayle. 

Each of the wives offered to assist ; Japhet's most 
practical of the four, cried : 

" And I will gather shippes here, 
To make a fire for you in feere, 
And for to dight your dynner, 
Against you come in." 

Noe. 
Now, in the name of God, I will begin 
To make the shippe that we shall in. 
That we be ready for to swym 
At the coming of the floode. 
These boards I joyne together, 
To keep us safe from the wedder. 
That we may rome both hither and thider. 
And safe be from this floode. 
Of this tree will I have the mast, 
Tyde with gables that will last ; 
With a sayle yarde for each blaste, 
And each thing in the kinde. 



202 The Old Miracle Plays 

But now comes trouble, for Noah's wife is disin- 
clined to enter. Noah says : 

" Wife, in this castle we shall be keped, 
My childer and thou would in leaped." 

She answers : 

" In faith, Noah, I had as lief thou had slipped for all thy frankish 
fare. 
For I will not doe after thy red." 

Noe. 
Good wife, doe as I the bj^dd. 

Noah's Wife. 

By Christ, not ; or I see more neede. 
Though thou stand all the day and rave. 

Noe. 

Lord, that women be crabbed, aye ! 
And never are meke, that dare I saye. 
This is well sene by me to daye, 
In witness of you each one. 
Good wife, let be all this beere 
That thou makes in this place here 
For all they wene thou art master ; 
And so thou art, by St. John. 

Then God gives His commands for filling the 
ark, and adds : 

Forty days and forty nightes, 
Rayne shall fall for their unrightes, 
And that I have made through my mighte, 
Now thinke I to destroy. 



The Old Miracle Plays 203 

Noah. 

Lord, at youre byddinge I am bayne 

Sith none other grace will gayne. 

Hel will I fulfil fayne, 

For gracious I the fynde. 

A hundred wynters and twenty 

This shipp making tarried have I. 

If, through amendment, any mercye 

Wolde fall unto mankinde. 

Have done, you men and women all ; 

Hye you, lest this water fall, 

That each beast were in his stall, 

And into ship broughte. 

Of clean beasts seaven shall be, 

Of unclean, two, this God bade me. 

This flood is nye well may we see, 

Therefore tarry you nought. 

Shem. 

Sir, here are lions, leopards in, 
Horses, mares, oxen, and swyne, 
Goates, calves, sheepe, and kine. 
Here sitten thou may see. 

Ham. 
Camels, asses, men may find, 
Buck, doe, harte, and hind. 
And beastes of all manner kinde. 
Here been, as thinks me. 

Japhet. 

Take here cats and dogs, too. 
Otter, fox, fulmart, also ; 
Hares, hopping gaylie, can yee 
Have cowle hae for to eate. 



204 The Old Miracle Plays 

Noah's Wife. 
And here are beares, wolfes sett, 
Apes, owles, marmoset ; 
Weesells, squirrels, and ferret, 
Here they eaten their meate. 

Wife of Shem. 
Yet more beasts are in this house, 
Here catles maken in full crowse ; 
Here a ratten, here a mouse. 
They stand nye together. 

Wife of Ham. 
And here are f owles less and more, 
Hearns, cranes, and bittour, 
Swans, peacocks, have them before 
Meate for this wedder. 

Wife ofjaphet. 
Here are cocks, kites, crowes, 
Rookes, ravens, many rowes. 
Cuckoos, curlews, whoso knows 
Each one in his kinde. 
And here are doves, diggs, drakes, 
Redshankes, running through the lakes ; 
And each fowle that ledden makes. 
In this ship men may find. 

In the stage directions, the sons of Noah are en- 
joined to mention aloud the names of the animals 
which enter, a representation of which, painted on 
parchment, is to be carried by the actors. 
Noah then speaks : 

" Wife, come in, why standes thou there ? 
Thou art ever forward that dare, I swear ; 
Come on God's half, tyme that were. 
For feare lest that we drown," 



The Old Miracle Plays 205 

Noah's Wife. 

Yea, Sir, set up your sail, 

And row forth with evil heale, 

For, without any fayle, 

I will not out of this towne. 

But I have my gossips every one. 

One foot further I will not gone. 

They shall not drown, by St. John ! 

And I may save their life. 

They loved me full well, by Christ ! 

But thou will let them in thy chist ; 

Else row forth, Noah, whither thou list, 

And get thee a new wife. 

Noah. 

Shem, some loe thy mother is wraw ; 
Forsooth, such another I do not know ! 

Shem. 

Father, I shall set her in, I trow, 

Without any fayle. 

Mother, my father after thee send. 

And bids thee into yonder ship wend. 

Look up and see the wind, 

For we be ready to sail. 

Noah's Wife. 

Son, go again to him and say, 
I will not come therein to-day. 

Noah. 

Come in, wife, in twenty devill's way. 
Or else stand without. 

Ha)}i. 
Shall we all fetch her in ? 



206 The Old Miracle Plays 

Noah. 
Yea, sons, in Christ's blessings and mine, 
I would you hied you betime. 
For of this flood I am in doubt. 

Japhct. 
Mother, we pray you altogether, 
For we are here, your childer, 
Come into the ship for feare of the wedder, 
For his love that you bought. 

Noah's Wife. 
That will I not for your call, 
But if I have my gossips all. 

Gossip. 
The flood comes in full fleeting fast, 
On every side it breadeth in hast. 
For fear of drowning I am agast. 
Good gossip, let me come in ! 
Or let us drink, or we depart. 
For often times we have done soe ; 
For at a time thou drinke a quart. 
And so will I or that I go. 

Shem. 
In faith, mother, yet you shall. 
Whether you will or not ! (Then he carries her in.) 

Noah. 
"Welcome, wife, into this boat. 

Noah's Wife. 
And have thou that for thy note ? 

(And gives him a slap in the face.) 

Noah. 
Ah, marry ! this is hot. 



The Old Miracle Plays 207 

A modern writer gives the following account of 
a performance, called " The Creation of the World," 
at a theater in Lisbon. On our entrance we found 
the theater nearly filled with well-dressed people, 
the front row of boxes full of ladies most superbly 
and tastefully dressed, their hair in braids and orna- 
mented with a profusion of diamonds and artificial 
flowers, without caps, and, upon the whole, making a 
very brilliant appearance. . . . When the curtain 
drew up we saw the Eternal Father descend in a 
cloud with a long, white beard, with a great number 
of lights and angels around him. He then gave 
orders for the creation of the world. Over his head 
was drawn an equilateral-triangle as an emblem of 
the Trinity. The next scene presented us with the 
serpent tempting Eve to eat the apple and his in- 
fernal majesty (the prince of darkness) paid the 
most exaggerated enconiums to her beauty, in order 
to engage her to eat, which as soon as he had done 
and persuaded Adam to do the same, there came a 
most terrible storm of thunder and lightning with a 
dance of infernal spirits with the devil in the midst, 
dressed in black with scarlet stockings, and a gold- 
laced hat on his head. While the dance was per- 
forming, a voice from behind the scenes pronounced 
in a hoarse and solemn manner, the word " Jesus," 
on which the devils immediately vanished in a cloud 
of smoke. 

After this, the Eternal Father descended in 
great wrath, without anv attendant, and called for 



208 The Old Miracle Plays 

Noah (who, bye the bye, we were much surprised to 
see as we did not know before that he was at that 
time in existence ; however, appear he did), who, 
when he appeared, the Eternal Father told him he 
was sorry he had created such a set of ungrateful 
scoundrels, and that, for their wickedness, he intended 
to drown them altogether. Here, Noah interceded for 
them, and at last, it was agreed that he should build 
an ark, and he was ordered to go to the king's dock- 
yard in Lisbon, and there he would see John Gon- 
zalvez, the master builder, for he preferred him to 
either the French or English builders (this produced 
great applause). The Eternal Father then went up 
to Heaven, and Noah to build his ark. 

It was from such a play as this (called Adam and 
Eve) that Milton, when he was in Italy, is said to 
have taken the first hint for his " Paradise Lost." 

In the play of " The Creation," as seen in Ger- 
many about 1783, light was produced by a stupid 
looking Capuchin in full bottomed wig, and a brocade 
morning gown worn over his own rusty dress, who, 
groping peevishly about in the dark, pushed the tap- 
estry right and left, disclosing a glimmer through 
linen cloths from candles placed behind them. The 
sea was created by pouring water on the stage, and 
the land by mould thrown on. Angels were per- 
sonated by girls and young priests in masquerade 
costumes, with the wings of geese clumsily fastened 
to their shoulders. These nondescript angels (celes- 
tial poultry), as Coleridge would call them, actively 



The Old Miracle Plays 209 

assisted the character in the flowered dressing gown 
in producing the sun, moon, and stars. 

To represent the brute creation, cattle were driven 
on the stage, with a horse (well shod), and two pigs, 
with rings in their noses. Adam and Eve were even 
more grotesque, and an ill-trained mastiff with a big 
brass collar, regaled himself upon the beef bone 
which had done duty as the extracted rib. And the 
narrator of all this says that there was no laughter 
among the audience, but it was entered into most 
seriously, with credulity and reverence. 

As a marked improvement on these ancient per- 
formances, the theater of Strasburg in 1816 exhib- 
ited scenes from the life of Christ from the best pic- 
tures of the great masters. Not a word was spoken, 
but music of the highest order, instrumental and 
vocal, added greatly to the impressiveness of the 
representation. Dr. Burney says, it is certain that 
the modern tragedy is taken from the mysteries, 
and that the Oratorio is only a mystery or morality 
in music. The Oratorio commenced with the priests 
of the Oratory, a brotherhood at Rome in 1 540, who 
set sacred stories to music to draw young people to 
church, and shrewdly left one-half to be performed 
after the sermon, so that they gained many listeners. 

Collier tells us that a miracle play is still ex- 
hibited at Gloucestershire at Christmas, with the char- 
acters of Herod, Beelzebub, etc. Victor Hugo, in 
the " Hunchback of Notre Dame," furnishes a vivid 
study of the performance of a miracle play in the 



210 The Old Miracle Plays 

middle ages, when they had lost their hold on the 
people. It jvas an utter failure. Madame Calderon 
De La Barca, wife of the Mexican consul, gives in 
the second volume of her interesting story of " Two 
Years in Mexico " an account of a religious drama 
performed on Good Friday at Coyohnacan (Cuyacan), 
evidently an imitation of the old miracle plays. She 
says at the close there was no drunkenness or quar- 
relling or confusion of any sort. An occasional 
hymn rising in the silence of the air, or the distant 
flashing of a hundred lights, alone gave notice that 
the funeral procession of the Saviour had not yet 
halted for the night ; but there was no noise, not 
even mirth. Everything was conducted with a 
sobriety befitting the event that was celebrated. 

We were told an anecdote concerning Simon, 
the Cyrenian, which is not bad. A man was taken 
up in one of the villages as a vagrant and desired 
by the justices to give an account of himself — to 
explain why he was always wandering about, and 
had no employment. The man, with the greatest 
indignation replied, " No employment. I am sub- 
stitute Cyrenian at Cuyacan in the Holy Week ! " 

Her husband prepared a series of critical treatises 
on the religious dramas of Spain. 

The Tyrolese entertain a passionate love for the 
mimic art. In that chatty book, " Gadding with a 
Primitive People," I find that they still have a 
yearly " Passion Play," on a small scale and in away 



The Old Miracle Plays 211 

that seems horridly irreverent to us. A large store 
was made Jehovah's throne, a few years since, and 
some boys kindled a fire and drove the actor down. 
In South Germany, Tyrol was undoubtedly the 
cradle of the mystery and miracle plays. 

One of the most telling traits illustrating the age 
of these plays, and which it is difficult to rhyme 
with the strict religious sense peculiar to these 
people, is the seemingly irreligious intermingling of 
the most commonplace events of every-day life with 
sacred episodes and saintly personages. Ere we 
harshly criticise this feature, we must remember 
that the native looks upon it in quite a different 
light than we should • — ^ as a part of his belief. 

The people, simple-hearted and full of reverent 
faith in the Bible, delighted in seeing the person- 
ages they had heard about in the churches, whose 
words they had so often heard, whose images they 
had devoutly contemplated. 

Protestantism wrested from Faith a large share 
of her working material, and had little favor for a 
light treatment of solemn subjects. 

And in the 1 5th century the miracles and mys- 
teries were condemned and left behind by the new 
secular culture, which only smiled at the artless 
effort to portray supernatural events. Thencefor- 
ward the stage, which has for its office to typify the 
world, has been erected far apart from the cliurcJi. 

Says 'Hudson, " We can hardly do justice either 
to the authors or to the audiences of these religious 



212 The Old Miracle Plays 

comedies, there being an almost impassable gulf 
fixed between their thoughts and ours. They were 
really quite innocent of the evils which we see and 
feel in what was so entertaining to them." 

John Stuart Alill speaks of " the childlike char- 
acter of the religious sentiment of a rude people, 
who know terror, but not awe, and are often on the 
most intimate terms of familiarity with the objects 
of their adoration." 

Those exhibitions, so rude and revolting to mod- 
ern taste and decorum, were full of religion and 
honest delectation to the simple minds who wit- 
nessed them, and without doubt they contained the 
germ of that splendid dramatic growth with which 
the literature and life of England are now adorned. 

Yet some deny any connection between the mod- 
ern, drama and miracle plays. 

There is a close similarity between the Persian 
and the mediaeval miracle play. It is the same thing 
sprung in the same soil, for the Parsees are true 
Aryan builders, and a real drama always sprouts 
where you find indigenous, unconscious building of 
the first order, which the Persian buildings from 
Persepolis to Hatra are. 

Matthew Arnold has written of the " Persian 
Passion Play," enacted annually even now, " far 
away in that wonderful East, from which whatever 
airs of superiority Europe may justly give itself, all 
our religion has come, and where religion of some 
sort or other has still an empire over men's feelings 
such as it has nowhere else." 



The Old Miracle Plays 2 13 

AH, the Lion of God, Mahomet's young cousin, 
the first person who, after his wife, believed in him 
was assassinated. His two sons, Hassan and 
Hussein, also suffered in the same way at Kerbela, a 
tragedy so familiar to every Mahomedan, and to us 
so little known. 

" O death! " cries the minstrel of Persia, " whom 
didst thou spare ? Were even Hassan and Hussein, 
those footstools of the throne of God on the seventh 
heaven, spared by thee ? No, thou madest them 
martyrs at Kerbela." 

Gibbon tells us that the tombs of Ali and his sons 
have their yearly pilgrims and their tribute of 
enthusiastic mourning, and they have been made the 
subject of a national drama. The first ten days of 
the month of Mohassen, the anniversary of the mar- 
tyrdom at Keebela, are given up to this excitement. 
Kings and people, everyone, is in mourning, and at 
night when the plays are not going on, processions 
keep passing, the air resounds with the beating of 
breasts and of litanies of O Hassan, Hussein, the 
most devoted mourners slashing their faces and 
bodies with knives, staining their white garments 
with blood. 

It seems as if no one went to bed, and certainly 
no one who went to bed could sleep. Confrater- 
nities go in procession, with a black flag and torches, 
every man with his shirt torn open, and beating 
himself with the right hand on left shoulder in 
measured cadence to a canticle in honor of the 
martys. 



214 The Old Miracle Plays 

Noisiest of all are the Berbers. One of their race 
having derided the family of Hassan in their afflic- 
tion, they now expiate their crime by beating 
themselves with chains and pricking their arms 
and cheeks with needles. So we are carried back, on 
this old Asiatic soil, where beliefs and usages are 
heaped layer upon layer and ruin upon ruin, far past 
these martyrs, past Mahomedanism, past Christianity, 
to the priests of Baal, gashing themselves with 
knives, and to the worship of Adonis. The theaters 
for this sacred drama are numerous and multiplying. 
Some hold 300, some several thousand persons. At 
Ispahan the representations bring togethei more 
than 20,000 people. A vast walled parallelogram 
with brick platform or stage in center, and this sur- 
rounded by black poles, joined at top by horizontal 
rods from which hang colored lamps. An immense 
awning protects the audience. Upon rows of 
gigantic masts are hung tiger and panther skins to 
indicate the violent character of the scenes to be 
represented, also shields of steel and of hippopota- 
mus skin, and flags and naked swords. A sea of 
color and splendor meets the eye all round. Wood- 
work and brickwork disappear under cushions, rich 
carpets, silk hangings, India muslin embroidered 
with silver and gold, shawls from Kerman and from 
Cashmere ; there are lamps, lusters of colored 
crystal, mirrors, Bohemian and Venetian glass, por- 
celain vases of all degrees of magnitude, from China 
and from Europe, paintings in profusion every- 
where, an Arabian night scene. 



The Old Miracle Plays 215 

But there is a marked contrast in the poverty of 
scenic contrivance and stage illusion. A copper 
basin of water represents the Euphrates ; a heap of 
chopped straw in a corner is the sand of the desert 
of Kerbela. No attempt at proper costume. The 
power of the actors is in their genuine sense of the 
seriousness of the business they are engaged in, 
nothing stilted, false, or conventional. The children 
who appear are from the principal families of their 
city. 

'* It is touching to see," says Count Gobineau, 
" these little things of three or four years old, dressed 
in black gauze frocks with large sleeves, and on their 
heads small round black caps, embroidered with 
silver and gold, kneeling beside the body of the 
actor, who represents the martyr, embracing him 
and with their little hands covering themselves with 
chopped straw, for sand, in sign of grief," 

In the travels " Through Persia by Caravan " the 
author says : " Once I showed a sketch of Kerbela to 
our servants and to a knot of bystanders, telling 
them what it represented. Immediately the picture 
was in danger. All wished to kiss it, to press it to 
their foreheads, and cried, ' Ah Hassan ! ' with an 
expression of deep regret, more true and tender in 
the ardor of sincerity than one expects to find 
uttered over a grave which has been closed for 
twelve centuries." 

Matthew Arnold gives an interesting explana- 
tion of this lasting enthusiasm for these saintly, 



216 The Old Miracle Plays 

gentle, self-denying sufferers, which puts into the 
arid religion of Mahomet something of the tender- 
ness, emotion, and sympathy which the formal Old 
Testament conception of righteousness received 
from the life and deeds of Christ and his followers. 
Could he wish for any sign more convincing that 
Christ was indeed the desire of all nations? So nee- 
essary is what Christianity contains, that a powerful 
successful religion arises without, and the missing 
virtue forces its way in. The martyrs of Kerbela 
held aloft to the eyes of millions of our race the 
lesson so loved by the sufferer of Calvary. 



OUR EARLY NEWSPAPER WITS. 



Just sixty minutes for a review of the clever men 
who have made newspaper wit a thing to be grate- 
ful for. No time will be wasted in quoting the 
hackneyed definitions of wit and humor that usually 
preface or rather make two-thirds of articles on this 
subject. James Parton says, that a lecture differs 
from every other form of composition in this, that 
so many points, distinctly stated and emphatically 
made, must be given in an exceedingly limited time. 
This will be my aim in bringing before you the 
humorists of the press, selecting their best sayings 
for your amusement. Seba Smith originated this 
style of writing during the administration of Andrew 
Jackson, assuming to be his special confidant, right- 
hand man and occasional bedfellow, with an ill- 
concealed envy of all other political favorites, and an 
honest hankering after the presidential chair for 
himself. His letters under the nom de plume of 
Major Jack Downing, were declared by Lord 
Brougham to be not merely humorous, but states- 
manlike, and for quaintness and humor, originality, 
and genius, unequalled since the writing of Hudibras. 
They were published in book form in 1834, and are 



218 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

now almost forgotten, but are still entertaining. In 
the introduction he says : "I only wish I had gone 
to school a little more when I was a boy, if I had my 
letters now would make folks crawl all over ; but if 
I had been to school all my lifetime I know I never 
could be able to write more honestly than I have. I 
am sometimes puzzled most plaguidly to git words 
to tell jest exactly what I think and what I know, 
and when I git 'em, I don't know exactly how to 
spell 'em, but so long as I git the sound I'll let other 
folks git the sense out, pretty much as our old friend 
down to Salem, who bilt a big ship to go to China, 
he called her the ' AsJia.' Now there is sich a thing 
as folks knowin' too much. All the larned ones was 
puzzled to know who ' Asha ' was, and they never 
would-a-known to this day what it ment if the owner 
of the ship hadn't tell'd 'em that China was in Asha. 
' Oh ! ah ! ' says the larned folks, ' we see now, but 
that aint the way to spell it.' ' What ! ' says he, ' if 
A-s-h-a don't spell Asha, what on earth does it spell ? ' 
and that stumped 'em." 

Here is a fair specimen of his style : " I and the 
gineral have got things now pretty considerable 
snug, and it is raly curious to see how much more 
easy and simple all the public affairs go on, than they 
did a spell ago when Mr. Adams was president. If 
it wasn't for Congress meetin', we could jest go about 
pretty much where we pleased, and keep things 
strait too ; and I begin to think now with the gineral, 
that arter all, there is no great shakes in managin 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 2 19 

the affairs of the nation. We have, pretty much all 
on us, ben joggin' about now since last grass, and 
things are jest as strait and clear now as they was 
then. The gineral has nigh upon made up his mind 
that there is no use to have any more Congress. 
They only bother us ; they wou'd do more good to 
stay at home and write letters to us, tellin' tis what 
is goin' on among 'em at home. It would save a 
considerable sum of money, too ; and I'm alsosartain 
that there is a plaguy raft of fellows on wages that 
don't earn nothin'. We keep all the secretaries and 
the vice-president and some district attorneys and a 
good many more of our folks and Amos Kindle 
moving about, and they tell us jest how the cat 
jumps. And, as I said afore, if it wasn't for Con- 
gress meetin' once a year, we'd put the government 
in a one-horse wagon and go jest where we liked." 

Mr. Van Buren, whose political nickname was 
" The Fox," a shrewd and politic, wily and wire- 
pulling man, is most admirably caricatured by the 
jolly major. 

In a discussion of the lucky vice-president, the 
general says : " Well, Major, he is a plaguey curious 
critter, arter all ; he'll make wheels turn sometimes 
right agin one another, yit he gits along, and when 
he lets his slice fall, or some one nocks it out of his 
hand, it ahvays, somehow, falls butter side up." 

" Well," says I, " Gineral, don't you know why ? " 

" Not exactly," says he, " Major." 



220 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

" Well," says I, " I'll tell you, he butters both, 
sides to once," says I. 

On shaking hands with a crowd at Philadelphia : 
" There was such a stream of 'em coming in that 
the hall was full in a few minutes, and it was so 
jammed up around the door that they couldn't get 
out again if they were to die. So they had to knock 
out some of the windows and go out t'other way. 
The president shook hands with all his might an 
hour or two, till he got so tired he couldn't hardly 
stand it. I took hold and shook for him once in a 
while to help him along, but at last he got so tired 
he had to lay down on a soft bench, covered with 
cloth, and shake as well as he could ; and when he 
couldn't shake, he'd nod to 'em as they come along. 
And at last, he got so beat out, he couldn't only 
wrinkle his forehead and wink. Then I kind of 
stood behind him, and reached my arm round under 
his, and shook for him for about half an hour as tight 
as I could spring. Then we concluded it was best 
to adjourn for that day." 

Orpheus C. Kerr (Robt. H. Newell) and Petroleum 
Nasby (D. R. Locke) both followed in Jack's foot- 
steps, with humorous letters full of hard hits at the 
weak places in political and army life, and Judge 
Haliburton, an English writer, better known as Sam 
Slick, contributed, in 1835, to a weekly newspaper 
in Nova Scotia, a series of articles satirizing the 
Yankee character that became extremely popular. 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 221 

but for originality and genuine fun, the palm must 
be given to the major. 

Orpheus C. Kerr published three volumes of his 
letters from the army, rather tedious with the con- 
stant repetition of his pet phrase, " my boy." And 
'tis hard to find anything that is not a trifle coarse. 

Washington, D. C, June 15, 1861. 

" The members of the Mackerel Brigade, now 
stationed on Arlington Heights to watch the move- 
ments of the Potomac, which is expected to rise 
shortly, desire me to thank the women of America 
for supplies of havelocks and other delicacies of the 
season just received. The havelocks, my boy, are 
rather roomy, and we took them for shirts at first ; 
and the shirts are so narrow-minded that we took 
them for havelocks. If the women of America 
would manage to get a little less linen in the collars 
of the latter article, and a little more into the other 
departments of the graceful garments, there would 
be fewer colds in this division of the Grand Army. 

" The havelocks, as I have said before, are roomy, 
very roomy, my boy. William Brown of Company 
B, regiment 5, put on one last night, when he went 
on sentry duty, and looked like a broomstick in a 
pillow-case for all the world. When the officer of 
the night came round and caught sight of William in 
his havelock, he was struck dumb with admiration 
for a moment ; then he ejaculated : ' What a splendid 
moonbeam ! ' William made a movement and the 
sergeant came up. ' What is that white object ? ' says 



222 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

the officer to the sergeant. ' The young man which 
is William Brown,' says the sergeant. ' Thunder ! ' 
roars the officer, ' tell him to go to his tent and take 
off that night-gown.' ' You're mistaken,' says the 
sergeant, * the sentry is William Brown in his have- 
lock, which was made by the wimmen of America.' 

" The shirts, too, are noble articles as far down as 
the collar. Captain Mortimer de Montague, one of 
the skirmish squad, put one on when he went to the 
President's reception, and the collar stood up so high 
that he couldn't put his cap on. His appearance at 
the White House was picturesque and interesting, 
and, as he entered the drawing room. General Scott 
remarked very feelingly, ' Ah ! here comes one of 
our wounded heroes.' ' He's not wounded, General,' 
remarked an officer standing by. ' Then why is his 
head bandaged up so? ' asked the venerable veteran. 
' Oh,' says the officer, ' that's only one of the shirts 
made by the patriotic women of America.' " 

And one more bit : 

" I asked the general of the Mackerel Brigade the 
other day, what kind of a flower he thought would 
spring above my head when I rested in a soldier's 
sepulchre, and he said : ' A cabbage, my boy,' he said 
a cabbage." 

We will now turn to Nasby, who was so popular 
during the war, and let him tell you of his ingenious 
scheme for inexpensive living : 

" I hev invented a new carpit-bag for the 
espeshal yoose uv patriots and agitaters. It is made 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 223 

nv thin Injy rubber, with a frame that folds up into 
a small compass. Yoo take that carpit-bag and blow 
it up till it bulges out at the sides ez tho it wuz full 
of cloze and things, and walk into a lodging house 
and demand rooms with confidence. That carpit- 
bag bustin' with valyooables settles it. It looks sol- 
vent, and everything is in looks. Yoo stay on the 
strength uv that bag, and hev yoor meals sent to 
yoor room, and live fat. Presently, your landlady 
wants money, and commences to watch that carpit- 
bag. Yoo can't get out of the house with it, for that 
is her anker and her hope. Very good. Some even- 
ing yoo go to yoor room, let the wind out uv it, fold 
it up and put it in yoor coat pocket, and bid her 
good evening, telling her yoo shel be home early, 
and she may light the fire at ten, and the place that 
knowd yoo wunst knows yoo no more furever. The 
first dark place yoo come to yoo blow it up again, 
and go boldly into another house and establish yoor- 
self in comfort ef not in luxury." 

Abraham Lincoln used to find relief from the 
presence of the responsibilities which weighed upon 
his mind, in reading the droll witticisms of Nasby 
and Artemus Ward. When the great question of 
emancipation was under consideration, he once came 
into a cabinet meeting, chuckling over one of Nasby's 
letters from " Confederate Cross Roads," and insisted 
upon reading it before any business was done. Men 
of formal dignity like Salmon P. Chase and Edward 
M. Stanton were shocked at Lincoln's apparent lev- 



224 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

ity at such a crisis ; but he was, really, a sadder as 
well as a wiser man than they. 

Artemus Ward (Charles F. Browne), who gained 
his first honors as a newspaper wit in the Cleveland 
Plaindealer, never sacrificed his friends for an epi- 
gram; he made you laugh and love him too. He 
seldom smiled in his lectures, no matter how absurd 
his statements. Many good people failed to see the 
comical in his performances. One old lady, accom- 
panied by her serious-minded daughters, left the hall 
in the midst of his lecture saying : " It is too bad to 
laugh at that poor young man. He doesn't know 
what he is saying and ought to be sent to a lunatic 
asylum." 

Others would survey this driest of droll men with 
looks of benevolent pity. It was his delight to puz- 
zle. In the middle of his lecture he would hesitate, 
stop , and say solemnly, " Owing to a slight indispo- 
sition, we will now have an intermission of fifteen 
minutes." The audience were properly amazed, at 
the prospect of staring at vacancy for a quarter of an 
hour, when, rubbing his hands the lecturer would 
add, " but — ah — during the intermission I will go 
on with my lecture." 

He once stated that the same lecture would be 
repeated in Constantinople — one week from date 
— and tickets for the round trip would be given to- 
audience as they passed out ! He observed that 
what he said had given pain to several, and he would 
then endeavor to explain his jokes. 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 225 

Sometimes he would seem to forget his audience, 
and stand for several seconds gazing intently at his 
panorama. Then he would recover from this fit of 
abstraction and remark apologetically, "■ I am very 
fond of looking at my pictures." Imagine the effect, 
when, after such an interruption, he would point with 
his little riding whip to some nondescript quadru- 
peds which he had all along characterized as cows 
and remark, " Those animals are Jwrses — I know they 
are because my artist says so. I had the picture two 
years before I discovered the fact. The artist came 
to me about six months ago and said, " It is useless 
to disguise it from you any longer, they are horses ^ 

" The most celebrated artists of London are so 
delighted with this picture that they come every day 
to gaze at it. I wish you were nearer to it so you 
could see it better. I wish I could take it to your 
residences and let you see it by daylight. Some of 
the greatest artists in London come here every morn- 
ing before daylight with lanterns to look at it. They 
say they never saw anything like it before — and 
they hope they never shall again." 

He insisted that one of his earliest literary efforts 
was an essay sent to the Smithsonian Institute, but, 
strange to say, rejected on the theme, " Is cats to be 
trusted." 

Some one speaking of Artemus called him a per- 
fect steam factory of puns and a museum of Ameri- 
can humor. His first lecture he called " The Babes 
in the Woods ; " he had thought of naming it " My 



226 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

Seven Grandmothers." It consisted of a wandering 
batch of comicalities, touching upon everything but 
the babes. 

The next was entitled " Sixty Minutes in Africa." 
Behind him hung a large map of Africa, which re- 
gion he said " abounded in various natural produc- 
tions, such as reptiles and flowers. It produces the 
red rose, the white rose, and the neg — roes. Apro- 
pos of negroes, let me tell you a little story," and no 
further reference to Africa until the very close of 
the entertainment. 

His experience as a showman is familiar, yet I 
never tire of his business letters, for instance — 

"I'm moving slowly down to'rds your place. How 
is the show bizness in your place. My show at pres- 
ent consists of three moral bares, a kangeroo (an 
avioosin little raskal, 'twould make you laf yourself 
to deth to see the little cuss jump up and squeal), 
wax figgers of Genl. Washington, Genl. Taylor, John 
Bunyan, Captain Kidd, Dr. Webster, in the act of 
killing Parkman, beside several miscellayous moral 
wax statoos of celebrated pirates," etc. (after hinting 
strongly for a puff). And again : " If you say any- 
thing about my show say my snaiks is as harmliss 
as a new born Babe. What an interestin' study it is 
to see a zewological animal, like a snaik, under per- 
fec' subjecshun ! I am anxious to skewer your influ- 
ence. I repeat in regard to them handbills that I 
shall get 'em struck off to your printin' offis. My 
perlitical sentiments agree with yourn exactly. I 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 227 

know they dew, because I never saw a man whose 
didn't." 

It was Artemus who preferred bald-headed butter 
and considered absence of body a better thing than 
presence of mind in case of an accident. 

Here is a characteristic story of the thin man en- 
gaged for a living skeleton, for a tour through Aus- 
tralia : 

" He was the thinnest man I ever saw. He was 
a splendid skeleton. He didn't weigh anything 
scarcely, and I said to myself, the people of Austra- 
lia will flock to see this tremendous curiosity. It is 
a long voyage, as you know, from New York to Mel- 
bourne, and, to my utter surprise, the skeleton had 
no sooner got out to sea than he commenced eating 
in the most horrible manner. He had never been on 
the ocean before, and he said it agree^ with him. I 
thought so ! I never saw a man eat so much in my 
life. Beef, mutton, pork, he swallowed them all like a 
shark, and between meals he was often discovered 
behind barrels eating hard-boiled eggs ! The result 
was that when we reached Melbourne, this infamous 
skeleton weighed sixty-four pounds more than I 
did. I thought I was ruined — but I wasn't. I took 
him on to California — another very long voyage — 
and when I got to San Francisco I exhibited him as 
a fat man ! " 

" People laugh at me," said Browne, " because of 
my eccentric sentences. There is no wit in the form of 
a well-rounded sentence. If I say ' Alexander con- 



228 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

quered the world and sighed because he couldn't do 
so some more,' there is a funny mixture," You 
notice that a majority of his jokes depend upon a 
sudden change from a serious beginning to an absurd 
ending. 

The character he created represents humor of an 
original type, yet he is said to have copied it from a 
living oddity ; as Denman Thompson gives a faith- 
ful imitation of a resident of "Swanzey" as Josh 
Whitcomb. His success in England was largely due 
to the impression that he gave a clever caricature 
of an American backwoodsman or showman. The 
celebrated wits on the staff of Punch used to frequent 
Egyptian Hall and roar at his solemn fun, vacant 
face, and inimitable drawl. Mark Twain says " Arte- 
mus looked like a glove stretcher ; his hair red and 
brushed well forward at the sides reminded one of a 
divided flame. His nose rambled on aggressively 
before him with all the strength and determination 
of a cow-catcher, while his red moustache, to follow 
out the simile, seemed not unlike the unfortunate 
cow." 

Lieut. Derby, known as " John Phoenix " and 
" Squibob," was often deliciously droll. 

His lectures on Astronomy, he frankly tells us, 
were originally prepared to be delivered before the 
Lowell Institute of Boston, IMass., but owing to the 
unexpected circumstance of the author's receiving 
no invitation to lecture before that institution, they 
were laid aside shortly after their completion. 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 229 

He some time after did receive an invitation to 
lecture before the Vallecetos Literary and Scientific 
Institute, but on arriving- at that place, he learned 
with deep regret that the only inhabitant had left a 
few days previous, having availed himself of the op- 
portunity presented by a passing emigrant's horse, 
and that, in consequence, the opening of the Insti- 
tute was indefinitely postponed. 

But the lectures are full of original ideas. He 
says : 

" Up to the time of a gentleman named Coperni- 
cus, who flourished about the middle of the fifteenth 
century, it was supposed by our stupid ancestors that 
the earth was the center of all creation, being: a larg^e, 
flat body, resting on a rock, which rested on another 
rock, and so on all the way down, and that the sun, 
planets, and immovable stars all revolved about it 
once in twenty-four hours. 

But Co-Pernicus (who was a son of Daniel Perni- 
cus, of the firm of Pernicus & Co., wool dealers, and 
who was named Co-Pernicus out of respect to his 
father's partners, soon set this matter to rights and 
started the idea of the present solar system. 

The demonstration of this system in all its per- 
fection was left to Isaac Newton (an English philos- 
opher), who seeing an apple tumble down from a 
tree, was led to think thereon with such gravity that 
he finally discovered the attraction of gravitation, 
which proved to be the great law of nature that keeps 
everything in its place. Thus we see that as an 



230 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

apple originally brought sin and ignorance into the 
world, the same fruit proved thereafter the cause of 
vast knowledge and enlightenment, and indeed we 
may doubt whether any other fruit but an apple and 
a sour one at that, would have produced these grand 
results; for had the fallen fruit been a pear, an 
orange, or a peach tree, there is little doubt that 
Newton would have eaten it up and thought no more 
on the subject." 

When the bill for a new chimney came in he ex- 
claims : " Bills, bills, bills ! How can a man name 
his child William ? The horrid idea of the partner 
of his joys and sorrows presenting him with a Bill ! 
— and to have that Bill continually in the house, 
constantly running up and down stairs always unset- 
tled ! " 

" Leaving San Francisco as the last line fell frqm 
the dock, and our noble steamer with a mighty throb 
and deep sigh, at bidding adieu to San Francisco, 
swung slowly round, the passengers crowded to the 
side to exchange a farewell salutation with their 
friends and acquaintances. ' Good-bye, Jones,' ' Good- 
bye, Brown,' ' God bless you old fellow, take care of 
yourself ! ' they shouted. Not seeing any one that I 
knew, and fearing the passengers might think I had 
no friends, I shouted ' Good-bye, Muggins,' and had 
the satisfaction of having a shabby man, much inebri- 
ated, reply as he swung his rimless hat, ' Good-bye, 
my brother.' Not particularly elated at this recog- 
nition, I tried it again, with, ' Good-bye, Colonel,' 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 231 

whereat thirty-four respectable gentlemen took off 
their hats, and I got down from the position that I 
had occupied on a camp stool, Avith much dignity. 

" Away we sped down the bay, the captain stand- 
ing on the wheel-house directing our course. ' Port, 
Port a little. Port,' he shouted. ' What's he a calling 
for ? ' inquired a youth of good-natured but unmis- 
takable verdancy of appearance, of me. ' Port 
wine,' said I, ' and the storekeeper don't hear him, 
you'd better take him up some.' ' I will,' said In- 
nocence ; ' Fve got a bottle of first-rate in my state 
room.' And he did, but soon returned with a par- 
ticularly crest-fallen and sheepish appearance. ' Well, 
what did he say to you,' inquired I. ' Pointed at 
the notice on that tin,' said the poor fellow. ' Pas- 
sengers not allowed on the wheel-house.' ' He is, 
though, ain't he ? ' added my friend with a faint 
attempt at a smile, as the captain in an awful voice 
shouted, 'Starboard!' 'Is what?' said I, 'Loud on 
the ivJiecl-Jioitse ! " 

Receiving a formal letter from the Secretary of 
War, inquiring " How far does the Tombigby run 
up?" he came near being cashiered for replying. 
" Dear sir, after a careful examination we find the 
Tombigby never did run up." They inquired if the 
Santa Clara could be dammed, and he replied he was 
certain it could, for he had been damning it ever 
since he came. 

"The Squibob Papers," a second volume from. 
Lieut. Derby, is enriched by comic illustrations from 



232 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

his own pen, which would convulse the most serious- 
minded audience, if they could only be enlarged and 
displayed. 

" A Side Elevation of G. Washington not by Gil- 
bert Stuart," adorns the first page. It was taken when 
the general was in the act of chewing tobacco, the 
left cheek is distended most absurdly, and the left 
eye is closed in a very wise wink. 

In his famous " Fourth of July Oration," he fol- 
lows the universal custom of inserting a full and 
complete biography of the immortal Washington 
and pays the following beautiful tribute to the 
memory of this greatest of men : 

" George Washington was one of the most dis- 
tinguished movers in the American Revolution. 
He was born of poor but honest parents at Genoa, in 
the year 1492. His mother was called the mother 
of Washington. He married, early in life, a widow 
lady, Mrs. Martha Custis, whom Prescott describes 
as the cussidest pretty woman south of Mason and 
Dixon's line. 

" Younof Washinofton commenced business as a 
county surveyor and was present in that character at 
a sham-fight, under General Braddock, when so 
many guns were fired that the whole body of militia 
were stunned by the explosion, and sate down to sup- 
per unable to hear a word that was said. This 
supper was afterwards alluded to as Braddock's deaf 
eat, and the simile, 'deaf as a Braddock,' subse- 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 233 

quently vulgarized into ' deaf as a haddock,' had its 
rise from that circumstance. 

" Washington commanded several troops during 
the Revolutionary War, and distinguished himself 
by fearlessly crossing the Delaware river, on ice of 
very inadequate thickness, to visit a family of Hes- 
sians of his acquaintance. He was passionately fond 
of green peas and string beans, and his favorite 
motto was : * In time of peace prepare for war.' 

" Washington died from exposure on the summit 
of Mount Vernon, in the year 1786, leaving behind 
him a name that will endure forever if posterity 
persist in calling their children after him to the 
same extent that has been fashionable." 

Derby's skill as a philologist is again seen in his 
explanation of the word oration, which he declared 
had a military origin in a custom once prevalent 
among commanding officers and chaplains of making 
long and verbose addresses to the troops, which 
were stigmatized as "all talk and no rations," 
whence the word " noration " was modernized into 
oration. 

In his own " noration " in his frantic rhapsody on 
the 4th of July he exclaims, " For on this day the 
great American eagle flaps her wings and soars aloft, 
until it makes your eyes sore to look at her, and 
looking down upon her myriads of free and enlight- 
ened children she screams, ' E Pluribus Unum ! ' 
which may be freely interpreted, ' Ain't I some ? ' 



234 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

and myriads of freemen answer back with joyous 
shout : 

" ' You are Punkins ! ' " 

His account of the meeting of the Massachusetts 
Dental Association or " three hundred tewth car- 
penters," with the motto on their banner, " A long- 
pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether," is pecu- 
liarly rich. 

" There was the elegant city practitioner, with 
shiny hat and straw-colored gloves, side by side with 
the gentleman from the country who hauls a man 
all over the floor for two hours, and gives him the 
worth of his money." 

One of the many toasts was, " The Woodcock, 
emblem of dentistry, he picks up his living from the 
holes, and passes in a precious long bill." 

Other interesting exercises were gone through 
with. 

A hackman passing by on his carriage was placed 
under the influence of chloroform, all his teeth 
extracted without pain, and an entire new and ele- 
gant set put in their place, all in forty-two seconds. 
His appearance was wonderfully improved. " I have 
never seen 300 dentists together before, and I don't 
believe anybody else ever did, but I consider it a 
pleasing and an imposing spectacle, and would sug- 
gest that the next time they meet they shall make 
an excursion which shall combine business with 
pleasure, and all go down together and remove the 
snags from the'mouth of the ^Mississippi." 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 235 

Derby at thirty years old shared with Artemus 
Ward the fame of being the greatest American 
humorist. One of his pranks sent him to San Diego. 
Jefferson Davis had asked the army officers who had 
served in Mexico to submit designs for a new service 
uniform. Derby responded with a series of clever 
drawings, one of which represented a cavalry man 
with an orange stuck on his cap as a pompon, 
explaining that it looked as well as the ordinary 
pompon, and in case the wearer grew tired or, 
thirsty he could take it off and suck it. 

Another device was an iron hook on the seat of 
the trousers. It could be put through a saddle ring 
so that no amount of hard riding could dislodo^e a 
horseman. In the infantry service these hooks 
might be used to carry camp kettles on a march and 
in battle, the file closers could use a ringed pole to 
advantage in catching men who had started to run 
away. Davis was so angry at this irreverence that 
he ordered the young officer to a hot and dusty place 
of exile. Seeing the sign while in Washington, 
" Ladies Depository," he made a futile effort to 
deposit his wife while he went around the corner to 
— see — a man. 

We come next to Mortimer Thompson, famous 
twenty years ago, the author of " Doesticks," " What 
He Says," "The Elephant Club," " Pluribustah," 
etc. He wrote a capital take-off on the successful 
vendors of quack medicines, at the time when 



236 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

Townsend's Sarsaparilla was the favorite beverage 
for bilious invalids. 

" As I, too, desire to have a mansion on Fifth 
Avenue, like the Medical Worthy of Sarsaparilla 
memory, and wished like him to be able to build a 
patent medicine palace, with a private chapel under 
the back stairs, and conservatory down cellar, I cast 
about me for some means whereby the requisite cash 
might be reputably accumulated. 

" Emulous of the deathly notoriety which has 
been acquired by the medicinal worthies just men- 
tioned, L also resolved to achieve a name and a 
fortune in the same reputable and honest manner. 
Bought a gallon of tar, a cake of beeswax, and a 
firkin of lard, and in twent3^-one hours I presented 
to the world the first batch of ' Doestick's Patent, 
Self- Acting, Four-Horse Power Balsam,' designed 
to cure all diseases of mind, body, or estate, to give 
strength to the weak, money to the poor, bread and 
butter to the hungry, boots to the barefoot, decency 
to blackguards, and common sense to the Know- 
Nothings. It acts physically, morally, mentally, 
psychologically, ph3''siologically, and geologically, 
and it is intended to make our sublunary sphere a 
blissful paradise, to which Heaven itself shall be 
but a side-show." 

Testimonials. 

" Dear Sir — The land composing my farm has 
hitherto been so poor that a Scotchman couldn't get 
his living off it, and so stony that we had to slice 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 237 

our potatoes and plant them edgeways ; but hearing 
of your balsam, I put some on the corner of a ten- 
acre lot, surrounded by a rail fence, and in the 
morning I found the rocks had entirely disappeared, 
a neat stone wall encircled the field, and the rails 
were split into ovenwood and piled up symmetrically 
in my back yard. 

" Put half an ounce into the middle of a huckle- 
berry swamp. In two days it was cleared off, planted 
with corn and pumpkins, and had a row of peach 
tress in full bloom through the middle." 

I give one more from a member of the senior 
class in a Western college : 

"My Dear Doctor — [You know I attended 
medical lectures half a winter, and once assisted in 
getting a crooked needle out of a baby's leg, so I 
understand perfectly well the theory and practice of 
medicine, and the Doctor is perfectly legitimate under 
the Prussian system.] By the incessant study 
required in this establishment I had become worn 
down so thin that I was obliged to- put on an over- 
coat to cast a shadow, but accidentally hearing of 
your Balsam, I obtained a quantity, and, in obedi- 
ence to the homeopathic principles of this institu- 
tion, took an infinitesimal dose only; in four days I 
measured one hundred and eighty-two inches round 
the waist ; could chop eleven cords of hickory wood 
in two hours and a half, and, on a bet, carried a yoke 
of oxen two miles and a quarter in my left hand, my 



238 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

right being tied behind me, and if anyone doubts 
the fact, the oxen are still to be seen. 

" About two weeks after this I had the pleasure 
of participating in a gunpowder explosion, on which 
occasion my arms and legs were scattered over^the 
village, and my mangled remains pretty equally dis- 
tributed throughout the entire country, 

" Under these circumstances my life was de- 
spaired of, and my classmates had bought a pine 
coffin, and borrowed whole shirts to attend the 
funeral in, when the invincible power of your four- 
horse power balsam (which I happened to have in 
my vest pocket) suddenly brought together the scat- 
tered pieces of my body — collected my limbs from 
the rural districts, put new life into my shattered 
frame, and I was restored, uninjured, to my friends, 
with a new set of double teeth." 

The Boston Post originated the " Funny Column," 
in which every local sheet now indulges. It was 
there that Saxe published his famous epigrams and 
B. P. Shillaber made himself famous by quotations 
from Mrs. Partington. One or two " oracular pearls " 
from the lips of this popular old lady must be given. 
Taken together they lose their lustre and she 
becomes a tedious old party, with the effort for the 
wrong word disagreeably obvious. Even I^e, forever 
plaguing the cat and doing sdme absurd thing to 
neatly end the paragraph never seems like a real 
boy. 

" Widow Bedott " and " Josiah Allen's wife " are 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 239 

actual persons. You laugh at them and with them, 
while this blundering dame seems simply a mouth- 
piece for Shillaber. But let us listen to her verbal 
contortions for a moment : 

" Entered at the Custom House," said Mrs. Part- 
ington, pondering on the expression, " I don't see 
how the vessels ever got in ; but I am glad that the 
collector cleared 'em right out again. It will learn 
them better manners next time, I think." 

" Now go to meeting, dear," said Mrs. P., as 
Isaac stood smoothing his hair, preparatory to going 
out on Sunday. He looked down at his new shoes 
and a thought of the green fields made him sigh. 
A fishing-line hung out of one pocket, which Mrs. 
Partington didn't see. 

"Where shall I go to?" asked Ike. Since the 
old lady had given up her seat in the Old North 
Church she had no stated place of worship. " Go," 
replied she sublimely, as she pulled down his jacket 
behind, " Go — anywheres, where the gospel is dis- 
pensed with." 

"Ah, yes," said Mrs. Partington, some years ago, 
as she watched the military pass by on the 2 2d of 
February, " Ah, yes, Washington is dead, and the 
worst of it is his mantel-piece hasn't fallen upon any 
living man ! " 

There are women in real life who say better 
things of this sort. I remember an old lady who at 
an evening party said of a passing belle, " Why, 
^he's a perfect paragram of a young lady ! " "I 



240 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

think you mean parallelogram," suggested a friend. 
Upon which she replied with a look of withering 
superiority, " I said parallelogram, Mr. Tenney." 

Occasionally, there is more of Shillaber than 
Partington, as in this remark : " There must be some 
sort of kin between poets and pullets, for they both 
are always chanting their lays." Shillaber has 
written good poetry, but will always be thought of 
as a blundering, kind-hearted old dame, with large 
spectacles on her beaming face and a small rogue at 
her side. He felt this himself and said he made a 
mistake in appearing as a lecturer, because the pub- 
lic wanted only Mrs. Partington. He says pathetic- 
ally, " George William Curtis said long ago, that 
when one has managed to stand on his head success- 
fully, the public wishes to see how he did it, but he 
must continue to stand on his head or they will be 
disappointed. I found this to be true. Partington 
was the cry. Partington was on the big posters at 
the corners of the streets. Partington was the theme 
of the lyceum presidents in introduction. I had 
stood on my head for fun, but here, in sober earnest, 
I could not make a mountebank of myself. 

" Artemus Ward wrote me from Cleveland : 
' Come out here like an old woman and sing a comic 
song, and you will carry the town.' The best I 
could give them were a few pleasant and mild lec- 
tures of excellent morals and of unexceptionable 
tone, but they desired Partington, and I confess to 
the folly, now, when I need it, of abandoning a for- 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 241 

tune, right within my very grasp, because I would 
not yield and leaving the field at its very threshold." 

Mrs. Partington is not an original creation, but 
is a reproduction of Smollett's Tabitha Bramble, 
Sheridan's Mrs. Malaprop, and Theodore Hook's 
Mrs. Ramsbottom, all of them much better, however. 

The name was suggested by an anecdote related 
by Sydney Smith in a speech at Taunton in 1831. 
He said : " I do not mean to be disrespectful, but 
the attempt of the lords to stop the progress of re- 
form reminds me very forcibly of the great storm of 
Sidmouth, and the conduct of the excellent Mrs. 
Partington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824, 
there set in a great flood upon that town ; the tide 
rose to an incredible height ; the waves rushed in 
upon the houses and everything was threatened 
with destruction. In the midst of this sublime storm 
Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was 
seen at the door of her house, with mop and pattens, 
trundling her mop and squeezing out the salt water 
and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic ocean. 
The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit 
was up, but I need not tell you that the contest was 
unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Airs. Partington. 
She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she 
should not have meddled with a tempest." 

As a brilliant journalist and versatile genius none 
can rank higher than George D. Prentice — a poli- 
tician and poet, an able lawyer, author, statesman, 
editor, wit, and a success in all. Bryant said: "I 



242 Our Earl}' Newspaper Wits 

have never known anyone in editorial life who 
equaled him in the energetic and industrious use of 
his powers. Of the vastness of those powers, very 
few are able to take the measure." 

In that just, discriminating, and worthy memorial 
of George D. Prentice, delivered before the General 
Assembly of Kentucky by Mr. Henry Watterson, 
and for which every friend and admirer of George 
D. Prentice is his debtor, Mr. Watterson says: "I 
found in London that his fame is exceeded by that 
of no newspaper writer ; but the journalists of Paris, 
where there is still nothing but personal journalism, 
considered him a few years ago as the solitary jour- 
nalist of genius among us. His sarcasms have often 
got into Charivari." He was, without question, the 
most popular and influential newspaper writer of 
whom we have any record. The author of the letters 
of Junius was popular and potent, but his reign, com- 
pared with that of Mr. Prentice, was very brief. 
His career was that of a shooting meteor which van- 
ished rapidly. The career of Mr. Prentice was that 
of a fixed luminary, steadily and serenely shedding 
its light through a long series of years. His style, 
for success in his objects, was preeminently supe- 
rior to that of any other newspaper writer. There 
are qualities of newspaper literature in which he 
was surpassed, but I have never known his equal 
in the power to seize the public mind and to 
imbue it with his owm convictions. The secret of 
his success was his gleaming, penetrating style ; his 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 243 

brief, concentrated humor or pungent wit and sar- 
casm, which was easily understood and housed in the 
memory. His versatility was as wonderful as any 
other element of his perfections as a paragraphist. 
He never repeated himself, nor did he need to bor- 
row from others. In these gifts, for such they seemed 
to be, in his long career as a journalist, he had no 
equal, even among the strong and able men who 
measured weapons with him." 

He could strike with a rapier or a bludgeon, and 
there was little mercy for editors who attacked him. 
One opposed a pet plan of his in a long and labored 
leader headed " More Villainy Afoot," The only 
notice taken by Prentice of this was a brief item. 
" We regret to see that Mr. So-and-so has lost his 
horse." 

When another grandly remarked of a certain 
question, " Let others take the responsibility, we 
wash our hands of it," he responded, " Washing 
your hands is an operation that will do you no man- 
ner of harm. Please think of your face at the same 
time." 

And here are some of his lighter sallies : 

An English writer says, in his advice to young 
married women, " that their mother Eve married a 
gardener." It might be added " that the gardener 
in consequence of the match lost his situation." 

" About the only person that we ever heard of 
that wasn't spoiled by being lionised was a Jew 
named Daniel." 



244 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

" We suppose there can be no disputing that the 
first Ark-tic expedition was got up by Noah." 

"An author, ridiculing the idea of ghosts, asks how 
a dead man can get into a locked room. ' Probably, 
with a skeleton key.' " 

" ' My dear wife, I wish you would try to keep 
your temper.' ' My dear husband, I wish you would 
try to get rid of yours.' " 

'' ' I'll bet my ears,' said an angry husband. ' In- 
deed, dear, you shouldn't carry betting to such 
lengtJis.' " 

"The Cincinnati representative in Congress boasts 
that he can bring an argument to a pint as quick as 
any other man. He can bring a quart to a pint a 
good deal quicker." 

" A female correspondent suggests a condition on 
which she will give us a kiss. We feel in duty bound 
to say, that kissing is a thing that at every proper 
opportunity, we set our face against." 

His ready wit never failed him. Bill Nye gives 
this illustration : 

The old Journal office used to be the stamping 
ground of many southern men more or less known, 
who liked to hear the veteran journalist tell a story 
or warm up a presumptuous young man for lunch. 
Among those who frequented the Journal office was 
Will S. Hays, the song writer. 

Coming into Mr. Prentice's office one day in that 
free and easy way of his, he sat down on one chair, 
with his feet in another, and jamming his hat on the 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 245 

back of his head, said, without consulting Mr. Pren- 
tice's leisure : 

" Seen my last song, George ? " 

Mr. Prentice ceased writing, sighed heavily, and, 
looking up sadly and reproachfully at the young 
man, said : 

" I hope so, Billy." 

His common sense was as remarkable as his 
brilliancy. 

" Men and women who read a great many light 
and superficial works will have a mere mass of crude 
and worthless knowledge, unless they also read books 
filled with stern, strong, hard thought. The birds 
have to pick up pebble stones to aid the digestion of 
the softer contents of their caws." 

We are indebted to the friendly biographer and 
editor of Mr. Prentice's poems, John J. Piatt, for this 
extract from a letter written by Mr. Prentice : 

" I rejoice, my little friend, that you are a believer. 
For my own part, I have no doubt eithey of the 
truths of Christianity or of the momentous and infi- 
nite importance of those truths. I hear a thousand 
things from the pulpit that make m.e smile, yet I 
would rather be a Christian of the very humblest 
order of intellect than the most gloriously-gifted infi- 
del that ever blazed like a comet through the atmos- 
phere of earth," 

Henry R. Shaw, Josh Billings, who as Eli 
Perkins expressed it, wore his hair in a court train 
over his collar, gained a wide notoriety as writer and 



246 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

lecturer. He failed several times in business, turned 
harlequin at forty-five, took the public by storm and 
made a large fortune as a comic paragraphist, lect- 
urer, and maker of Alminax and apothegms. How 
quaint and irresistible is his Essay on Rats : 

" Rats originally cum from Norway, and I wish 
they had originally stayed there. They are about as 
uncalled for as a pain in the small of the back. 
They can be domesticated dredful eazy, that is, as 
far as gittin' in cupboards and eatin' cheese and 
knawing pie is concerned. The best way to domes- 
ticate them that I ever saw, is tew surround them 
gently with a steel trap ; you can reason with them 
then to great advantage. I serpose there is between 
50 and 60 millions of rats in Ameriky (I quote now 
entirely from memory), and I don't suppose there is 
a single necessary rat in the whole lot. This shows 
at a glance how many waste rats there is." 

A few of his terse sayings will show the wisdom 
of the joker: "When a feller gets a goin'down hill, 
"it dus seem as tho everything had been greased for 
the okashun." 

" I don't insist upon pedigree for a man or horse. 
If a horse kan trot fast the pedigree is all right ; if 
he kan't, I wouldn't give a shilling a yard for his 
pedigree." 

" It is dredful easy to be a phool. A man kan be 
one and not know it. Fust appearances are ced to be 
everything. I don't put all my faith into this sayin. 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 247 

I think oysters and klams, for instance, will bear 
looking into." 

This union of strong common sense, keen wit, 
outrageous orthography is seldom tiresome. The 
success of his writings has brought numerous com- 
petitors into the field who seem to imagine that, if 
the spelling is only bad enough, the absence of wit 
and sense will not be noticed, not understanding 
that the peculiar spelling is an ingenious method of 
evading either pretension or an assumption of intel- 
lectual acuteness. 

Horace Greeley denounced the modern humorist 
who thrives on bad spelling. 

Samuel L. Clemens, the irrepressible Mark Twain, 
is best in long narratives. The tidal wave of laughter 
that rose from the reading of " Innocents Abroad," 
spread over two continents. 

The London World, in publishing a series of pen- 
portraits of " Celebrities at Home," devoted one 
paper to " Mark Twain at Hartford," describing him 
as surrounded by every object which wealth and 
taste can procure, the prince of entertainers, the cen- 
ter of a delightful circle of friends. 

It would be easy to resolve Mr. Clemens' methods 
of rousing a laugh into a few general formulas such 
as solemn misstatement and specific exaggeration. 
For instance, speaking of New England weather, he 
said : " In the spring I've counted 136 different kinds 
of weather inside of 24 hours." If he had said, " I 
have counted a great many different kinds of weather, 



248 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

no one would have smiled. The wit lies in the defi- 
niteness of the exaggeration. Alas ! after an analy- 
sis of the method, the wit eludes us. Wit can never 
be captured nor defined. Mr. Clemens named one 
of his dogs "Joseph Cook," because, as he said, 
there are some things about that dog he can't under- 
stand, depths in that dog's nature which he fails to 
fathom. He says of a cat's midnight serenade that 
he doesn't mind the noise, it's their sickening gram- 
mar that distresses him. Mark Twain has a natural 
drawl. Artemus Ward assumed his to surprise and 
hold his audience. 

Mark Twain tells us in his valuable appendix to 
''A Tramp Abroad," all about the German journals 
which have neither "editorials," "personals," nor 
" funny paragraphs ; " no " rumors," no abuse of pub- 
lic officials, no rehash of cold sermons, no weather 
items. , 

Once a week the German daily of the highest class 
lightens up its heavy columns with a profound an 
abysmal book criticism ; a criticism which carries 
you down, down, down, into the scientific bowels of 
the subject ; sometimes it gives you a gay and chip- 
per essay about ancient Grecian funeral customs, or 
the ancient Egyptian methods of tarring a mummy, 
or the reasons for believing that some of the peoples 
who existed before the flood did not approve of cats. 

These matters can be handled in such a way as 
to make a person lowspirited. 

The German humorous papers are beautifully 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 249 

printed, and the illustrations finely drawn and deli- 
ciously funny. So generally are the two or three 
terse sentences which accompany the picture. I 
remember one where a most dilapidated tramp is 
ruefully contemplating some coins which lie in his 
open palm. He says : " Well, begging is getting 
played out. Only about 5 marks, $1.25, for the whole 
day, many an official who makes more." And a pic- 
ture of a commercial traveler who is about to unroll 
his samples. 

Merchant (pettishly) — " No, dont. I don't want 
to buy anything." 

Drummer — " If you please, I was only going to 
show you — " 

Merchant — " But I don't wish to see them." 

Drummer (after a pause, pleadingly) — " But do 
you mind letting me look at them ? I havn't seen 
them for three weeks ! ! " 

Brander Matthews considers Mr. Clemens our 
greatest humorist, also one of the masters of Eng- 
lish prose, one of the foremost story-tellers of the 
world, with the gift of swift narrative, with the cer- 
tain grasp of human nature, with a rare power of 
presenting character at a passionate crisis, yet usu- 
all}^ set down as only a funny man or a newspaper 
humorist. He has more humor than any one else of 
his generation. 

Charles H. Webb, known as " John Paul," has 
written much in the way of newspaper wit, exceed- 
ingly droll and dry, quite unlike his predecessors, 



250 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

and is, besides, a writer of pleasant verses and bur- 
lesques on several novels. These were tremen- 
dously funny, seizing on the weak points of each and 
making them doubly ridiculous. He is a quiet, 
homely man, with red hair and a stutter as delicious 
as was Lamb's hesitancy in getting off a joke, his 
blue eyes often saying more than his tongue. His 
letters from Saratoga, the South, abroad, are capital 
and unique. He says, " I did not take after my 
father, but it was an ecstatic satisfaction to reflect 
how often that worthy gentleman took after me ! 

" Never shall it be said by me that I put my 
hand to the plough and turned back ; never shall it 
be said that I put hand to a plough at all, unless 
a plough should chase me upstairs into the privacy 
of my bedroom, and then I should only put hand to 
it for the purpose of throwing it out of the window. 
The beauty of the farmer's life was never very clear 
to me." 

Autograph albums are sufficiently trying when 
you are urged to record some sweet sentiment and 
display your bad penmanship on poor paper, but 
"mental photographs" are an added agony. The 
truth is tame in answering these conundrums and 
your struggle to be witt)'- and original is depressing 
in the extreme. Even Mr. Webb made some stupid 
efforts, but one or two answers are comical, for 
instance : 

" What is your favorite object in Nature ? Two 
Bowers." 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 251 

" Hour in the day? Bed time." 

"Gem? Jemima." 

" Style of beauty? A round figure." 

" What book (not religious) would you part with 
last ? My pocket-book." 

" Where would you live? In clover." 

" What is your aim in life ? Amiability." 

" What is your motto ? When you must — you'd 
Ipetter." 

" Max Adeler," Charles H. Clark of the Philadel- 
phia Bulletin, objected to being ranked among the 
professional humorists, as his life is earnest and full 
of serious work, but as his humor is among the most 
rollicking and grotesque that has ever appeared in 
this country, we cannot afford to leave him out. 
Both his books, " Out of the Hurly-Burly," and 
" Elbow Room" are extremely popular, 5,000 copies 
of the latter selling in London within a month after 
its appearance. 

He is not a paragraphist, but prefers to throw his 
droll fun into the form of sustained narrative. 

He dedicates " Elbow Room " to that delicious 
yet unconscious humorist, " The Intelligent Com- 
positor," who transformed " Filtration is sometimes 
accomplished with the assistance of albumen," into 
" Flirtation is sometimes accomplished with the 
resistance of aldermen " ; made me inquire, " Where 
are the dead, the varnished diQ2A'" ; also for this sen- 
tence, "A comet swept o'er the heavens with its 



252 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

trailing skirt," substituted, " A count slept in the 
hay-mow in a traveling shirt." 

Such talent is wonderful and awful. His obituary 
notices in " Hurly-Burly," in that chapter entitled, 
"Trouble in the Sanctum," have been quoted all 
over the land. Imagine the surprise of a bereaved 
mother on finding this tribute to her darling : 

" O bury Bartholomew out in the woods, 

In a beautiful hole in the ground, 
Where the bumble-bees buzz and the woodpeckers sing. 

And the straddle-bugs tumble around. 
So that in winter when the snow and the slush, 

Have covered his last little bed, 
His brother Artemas can go out with Sam, 

And visit the place, with his sled." 

Or picture the feelings of the estimable family of 
Mr. McGlue as they read : 

" The death angel smote Alexander McGlue, 

And gave him protracted repose. 
He wore a checked shirt and a No. 9 shoe, 

And he had a pink wart on his nose. 
No doubt he is happier dwelling in space. 

Over there on the evergreen shore. 
His friends are informed that his funeral takes place 

Precisely at quarter past four." 

The brother's indignant protestations as to the 
absolute freedom of Alexander's face from warts of 
any sort, particularly the pink variety, must be read 
to be appreciated. 

There is a wide difference of opinion as to the 
merits of Eli Perkins (Melville D. Landon). Some 
pronounce him incomparably funny, others make all 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 253 

manner of fun of him and his writings, others think 
him a disagreeable Paul Pry at Saratoga, where no 
one is safe from his pen. 

At any rate he has the art of making money, 
knows nothing of the sorrow of "broad grins under 
narrow circumstances," and draws large crowds to 
his lectures. 

He states that the first composition he ever wrote 
ran about thus : " A eel is a fish with its tail all the 
way up to his ears. Never fool with powder. Eli 
Perkins." 

This, he says, was the only original poetry he 
ever wrote, and it was composed by another feller. 

His "Saratoga in 1901," published first in Co7)i- 
mercial Advertiser,"' and is full of facts and gossip 
and lively description chronicling the anecdotes and 
bon mots of others in a generous way. He asks 
them why a table is in the subjunctive mood and 
answers : " Because it's would (wood) or should be," 
and afhrms that Saratoga reminds him constantly of 
home, " because its the dearest spot on earth." 

On one of his big posters the other day was seen, 
after the subject and testimonials from the press, 
the comfortable assurance that Eli would surely be 
there at such a date, and underneath his telegram : 

" I shall be on hand. I invariably attend my 
own lectures." 

Every once in a while a new " funny man " 
appears. It is not so long ago since people were 
inquiring " Who's that fellow on the Danbury 



254 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

News ? " His descriptions of the absurd complica- 
tions connected with such household afflictions as 
cleaning- house, and putting up stoves, and hanging 
out clothes in winter time, in a sleety rain, or a 
man's delirious attempts to sew on a button when 
his wife's hand is disabled, or to drive a refractory 
hen into a coop, or a cow out of the garden, are 
side-splitting ; fine illustrations of the " total de- 
pravity of inanimate objects " and " the perversity of 
things in general," His special peculiarity is the 
effective use of the word "that;" "that horse" or 
" that boy " sounding much more comical than " the 
boy" or "the horse." His news items are capital in 
their way, such as " A King St. man's name is so 
long he can knock down apples with it," or, "A 
Danbury agriculturist has put a bundle of straw 
upon his barn because straws show which way the 
wind blows." 

He is good in such a paragraph as this : 

" We can never tell exactly where we lose our 
umbrellas. It is singular how gently an umbrella 
unclasps itself from the tendrils of our mind and 
floats out into the filmy distance of nothingness." 

Mr. Bailey is, however, at his very best in detail- 
ing a family squabble over some ludicrous trouble, 
as a bureau drawer that won't be managed. 

"The man who will invent a bureau drawer which 
will move out and in without a hitch, will not only 
secure a fortune, but will attain to an eminence in 
history not second, perhaps, to the greatest warriors. 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 255 

There is nothing, perhaps (always excepting a stove 
pipe), that will so exasperate a man as a bureau 
drawer which will not shut. It is a deceptive arti- 
cle. It will start off all right, then it pauses at one 
end, while the other swings in as far as it can. It is 
the custom to throw the whole weight of the person 
against the end which sticks. If any one has suc- 
ceeded in closing a drawer by so doing, he will con- 
fer a favor by sending his address to this office. 

"Mrs. Holcomb was trying to shut a bureau drawer 
Saturday morning ; but it was an abortive effort. 
Finally she burst into tears. Then Mr. Holcomb 
told her to stand aside and see him do it. ' You see,' 
observed Mr. Holcomb, with quiet dignity, ' that the 
drawer is all awry. Now, anybody but a woman 
would see at once, that to move a drawer standing in 
that position would be impossible. I now bring this 
other end even with the other, so, then I take hold of 
both knobs and with an equal pressure from each 
hand, the drawer moves easily in. See ? ' The 
dreadful thing moved readily forward for a distance 
of nearly two inches, then it stopped abruptly ! " 

" ' Ah ! ' observed Mrs. Holcomb, beginning to 
look happy again. Mr. Holcomb very properly made 
no response to this ungenerous expression ; but he 
gently worked each end of the drawer to and fro, 
but without success. 

" Then he pulled the drawer all out, adjusted it 
properly, and started it carefully back ; it moved as 
if it were on oiled wheels. 



256 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

" Mr. Holcomb smiled. 

" Then it stopped. 

" Mr. Holcomb looked solemn. 

" ' Perhaps you haven't got the ends adjusted,' sug- 
gested the happy Mrs. Holcomb. 

" Mr. Holcomb made no reply, were it not for an 
increased flush in his face it might have been doubted 
if he heard the remark at all. He pushed harder at 
the drawer than was apparent to her, but it didn't 
move. He tried to bring it back again ; but it would 
not come. 

" ' What dumb fool put this drawer together, I'd 
like to know ? ' he snapped out. 

" She made no reply, but she felt that she had not 
known such happiness since the day she stood before 
the altar with him, with orange blossoms in her hair. 

" ' I'd like to know what in thunder you've been 
doing to this drawer, Jane Holcomb,' he jerked out. 

" ' I haven't done anything to it,' she replied. 

" ' I know better,' he asserted. 

" 'Well, know what you please, for all I care,' she 
sympathizingly retorted. The cords swelled up on 
his neck and the corners of his mouth grew Avhite. 

" ' Are you sure you have got everything out of 
here you want,' he finally asked, with a desperate 
effort to appear composed. 

" ' O ! that's what you are stopping for, is it ? But 
you needn't ; I have got what I wanted ; you can 
shut it right up.' 

" He erew redder in the face and set his teeth 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 257 

firmly together, and put all his strength to the obdu- 
rate drawer, while a hard look gleamed in his eye. 

" But it did not move. 

" He pushed harder and groaned. 

" ' I'm afraid you havn't got the ends adjusted,' 
she maliciously suggested. 

" ' I'll shut that drawer or I'll know the reason of 
it,' he shouted, and he jumped up and gave it a pas- 
sionate kick. 

" ' O, viy ! ' she exclaimed. 

"He dropped on his knees again, and grabbed 
hold of the knobs, and pushed at them with all his 
might. But it didn't move. 

" ' Why in heaven's name don't you open the 
window ? Do you want to smother me,' he cried. 

" It was warm, dreadfully warm. The perspira- 
tion stood in great drops on his face or ran down into 
his neck. The birds sang merrily outside the door, 
and the glad sunshine lay in golden sheets on the 
earth ; but he didn't notice them. He would have 
given five dollars if he had not touched the accursed 
bureau ; he would have given ten if he had never 
been born. He threw all his w^eight on both knobs, 
it moved, then it went to its place with a suddenness 
that threw him from his balance and brought his 
burning face against the bureau with force enough 
to skin his nose and fill his eyes with water to a de- 
gree that was blinding. Then he went out on the 
back stoop and sat there for an hour scowling at the 
scenery." 



258 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

Mr. Bailey described constitutional irritability in 
a peculiar manner. His only object was to cause 
laughter, but the utility of his work was presently 
seen to be outrunning his intentions. With the ex- 
ception of some fine descriptive writing in his letters 
from England, he seems to have shown little earnest- 
ness of purpose. But he has admirably ridiculed a 
serious defect of human nature. Undoubtedly, many 
a passionate man who has been ready to shriek with 
rage at some small pin-point of a circumstance, has 
suddenly caught the ridiculous impression of the 
affair, and subsided from his high-strung condition 
into one of laughter. This is absolute gain. Spinoza 
has demonstrated that in the condition of cheerful- 
ness we are nearer real existence — live more — than 
in a condition of pain, which causes a lessening of 
our existence through reason. 

Mr. Lanigan of the New York World has pub- 
lished there a series of inimitable fables, quite eclips- 
ing ^?isop with his cynical moral, and these imique 
fables are illustrated by Church, so that the pictures 
are as good as the text : 

The Kind-Hearted She-Elephant. 

A kind-hearted She-Elephant, while walking through the Jun- 
gle where the Spicy Breezes blow soft o'er Ceylon's Isle, heed- 
lessly set foot upon a Partridge, which she crushed to death within 
a few inches of the Nest containing its Callow Brood. " Poor 
little things!" said the generous Mammoth, "I have been a 
Mother myself, and my affection shall atone for the Fatal Conse- 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 259 

quences of my Neglect." So saying, she sat down upon the 
Orphaned Birds. 

Moral. — The above Teaches us What Home is Without a 
Mother ; also, that it is not every Person who should be intrusted 
with the Care of an Orphan Asylum. 

The Lion and the Insurance Agent. 

An Insurance Agent happening to meet a Lion, asked him if 
he would insure his Life. "No," responded the Monarch of the 
Forest with a resounding Roar, "nor yours." Thus saying he 
tore the unhappy Man to pieces, and fed on his damaged Cheek 
and other more penetrable Portions. 

Moral. — There is such a Thing as being instant out of Season. 

The Grasshopper and the Ant. 

A Frivolous Grasshopper, having spent the Summer in Mirth 
and Revelry, went on the Approach of the inclement Winter to the 
Ant, and implored it of its charity to stake him. " You had better 
go to your Uncle," replied the prudent Ant ; had you imitated my 
Forethought and deposited your Funds in a Savings Bank you 
would not now be compelled to regard your Duster in the light of 
an Ulster." Thus saying, the virtuous Ant retired, and read in 
the Papers next morning that the Savings Bank where he had 
deposited his Funds had suspended. 

Moral. — Du>n Vivimus, Vivamus. 

The Two Turkeys. 

An Honest Farmer once led his two Turkeys into his Granary 
and told them to eat, drink, and be merry. One of these Turkeys 
was wise and one fooKsh. The foolish Bird at once indulged 
excessively in the Pleasures of the Stable, unsuspicious of the 
Future, but the wiser Fowl, in order that he might not be fattened 
and slaughtered, fasted continually, mortified his Flesh and 
devoted himself to gloomy Reflections upon the brevity of Life. 
When Thanksgiving approached, the Honest Farmer killed both 



260 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

Turkeys, and by placing a Rock in the interior of the Prudent 
Turkey made him weigh more than his plumper Brother. 

Moral. — As we Travel through Life, Let us Live by the 
Way. 

Burdette is one of the best of our popular para- 
graphists. Banter, badinage, burlesque, irony, 
verse, repartee, narrative, and lecture, from quiet 
humor to the wildest buffoonery, he is at home in 
all, a man of daring fun and extreme versatility. 

" The body of a tramp was found beside a hay- 
stack out in Sac County one day last week, nearly 
devoured by rats. As -^sop remarked, 'Mus — et 
rusticus.' " 

From the Haivkeye Humorist : 

" Woman is a natural traveler. It is a study to 
see her start off on a trip by herself. She comes 
down to the depot in an express wagon three hours 
before train time. She insists on sitting on her 
trunk out on the platform, to keep it from being 
stolen. She picks up her reticule, fan, parasol, 
lunch-basket, small pot with a house plant in it, 
shawl, paper bag of candy, bouquet, (she never 
travels without one), small tumbler and extra veil, 
and chases hysterically after every switch engine 
that goes by, under the impression that it is her 
train. Her voice trembles as she presents herself at 
the restaurant and tries to buy a ticj^et, and she 
knocks with the handle of her parasol on the door of 
the old disused tool-house, in vain hopes that the 
baggage-man will come out and check her trunk. 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 26I 

She asks everybody in the depot and on the plat- 
form when the train will start, and where it will 
stand, and, looking straight at the great clock, asks : 
' What time is it now ? ' She sees with terror the 
baggage-man shy her trunk into a car where two 
men are smoking instead of locking it up by itself 
in a large, strong, brown car, with ' Bad order shops ' 
chalked on the side, which she has long ago de- 
termined to be the baggage car, as the only safe one 
in sight. Although the first at the depot she is the 
last to get her ticket, and once on the car she sits to 
the end of her journey in an agony of apprehension 
that she has got on the wrong train, and will be 
landed at some strange station, put in a close car- 
riage, drugged and murdered, and to every last male 
passenger who walks down the aisle she stands up 
and presents her ticket which she invariably carries 
in her hand. She finally recognizes her waiting 
friends on the platform, leaves the car in a burst of 
gratitude, and the train is ten miles away before she 
remembers that her reticule, fan, parasol, lunch- 
basket, verbena, shawl, candy, tumbler, veil, and 
bouquet are on the car-seat, where she left them or 
at the depot in Peoria, for the life of her she can't 
tell which." 

I have the good fortune to know, as friends, many 
of the wits of the New York press ; among them, 
Mr. Alden, who delighted his friends with his " Sixth 
Column Fancies " and " Shooting Stars " in the Daily 
Times, Mr. Croffut, author of the " Cumedietta of 



262 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

Deseret," the Bourbon ballads, and for several years 
connected with the Graphic, and known widely by 
his witty doggerel and " Graphicalities." This dog- 
gerel is, perhaps, too funny, but it is Croffut's and 
shall go in. 

"WHY IS A — ?" 

" Willie, here's a conundrum — Why's a — " 
Then, as she stammered and paused to think, 

He cried, " Shoot it off ! Whoop 'er up, 'Liza ! 
Bet y' I'll guess it quicker'n wink." 

" Wait, Impatience ! Give me a minute — " 
She pleaded, then said : " What crime is a tar — " 

And stuck once more. "There's a good joke in it ! " 
She added, while he, " How slow you are ! " 

Again she began, "What crime does a sailor, 

In a soldier's quarters taken sick, 
Resemble ? Now, then, you noisy railer ! 

Just guess it ! Give us the answer quick 1 " 

He guessed three weeks, and didn't get nigh it ; 

Ate fish to strengthen his phosphoric brain ; 
Set all his ingenious friends to try it ; 

Then got shampooed, and went at it again. 

At last he gave up, and she told the answer : 
" A sailor took sick in such a place. Will, 

Is like an attempt to murder a man, sir ! 
You see he's a salt within tent took ill ! " 

A shriek like the whoop of a Sioux he uttered. 
Then fell in a swoon. They poulticed his head ; 

In a week thej' saw that his pulse still fluttered ; 
In a month they bolstered him up in bed. 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 263 

The doctor sought Eliza to tell her, 

" Your William is crazy ; observe that grin ; 

His mind still wanders ; you'll kill that feller 
'F you ever conundrum to him agin ! " 

W. A. C. 

Such clippings or sippings of American punch 
would prove a pleasant beverage in a dull day. 
Take, for instance, this soliloquy from a little paper 
in Arkansas : 

" Some of our exchanges are publishing a curious 
item to the effect, that a horse in Iowa pulled the 
plug out of the bunghole of a barrel for the purpose 
of slaking his thirst. We do not see anything extraor- 
dinary in the occurrence. Now, if the horse had 
pulled the barrel out of the bunghole and slaked his 
thirst with the plug, or if the barrel had pulled the 
bunghole out of the horse and slaked its thirst with 
the plug, or if the barrel had pulled the bunghole out 
of the plug and slaked its thirst with the horse, or if 
the plug had pulled the horse out of the barrel and 
slaked its thirst with the bunghole, or if the bung- 
hole had pulled the thirst out of the horse and slaked 
the plug with the barrel, or if the barrel had pulled 
the horse out of the bunghole and plugged its thirst 
with the slake, it might be worth while to make a 
fuss about it." 

To personate folly a writer must appear foolish. 
If he represents the ludicrous in life, he must often 
play the buffoon, which, by the way, is a very diffi- 
cult part, and is generally given a higher place on 



264 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

the stage than heav}' tragedy. Gravity, owl-like 
gravity, is often a badge of mediocrity. 

Comic journalism did not thrive at first in the 
United States. The people were too serious ; life 
was too earnest to stop to smile over a purely amus- 
ing paper. But Puck, Life, The Judge, and a half 
dozen other funny sheets now manage to keep a 
strong hold on the public. Hudson said, sometime 
ago : " Our people don't want their wit on a separate 
dish. No one can always be funny. Weekly drafts, 
like a run on a bank, tend to exhaust them." There 
are other newspaper wits that should be mentioned, 
as Halleck and Drake in their famous " Croaker " 
papers ; Joseph Neal with his " Charcoal sketches " ; 
Lewis Gaylord Clark of the " Knickerbocker " Maga- 
zine ; and later, Will M. Carleton and Charles Follen 
Adams, best known by his perfect poem of " Leedle 
Yacob Strauss " ; but writing comical verses all the 
time that appeal to the heart, while they raise a 
smile. 

Wit, humor that is full of absurd exaggerations, 
and fun of an essentially American type, bubble 
up spontaneously all over our country as freely as 
the oil wells of Pennsylvania. Even the religious 
weeklies have now a funny column, and some of the 
paragraphs in our best dailies sparkle with wit that 
deserves a longer life. 

The humor of the newspapers is a natural and 
wholesome product of our national development. 
We are a nation of newspaper readers. The daily 



Our Early Newspaper Wits 265 

and weekly journals reflect every phase of our busy 
progressive life, and aim to keep pace with, if not to 
direct the intellectual growth of the people. A col- 
umn which presents the current wit and humor of 
the day has become an essential department of every 
good paper. From the harrowing details of a railroad 
accident on the first page, and from the scaipely less 
depressing editorial struggle with the tariff question, 
we turn with restful relief to the grotesque wit of 
Bill Nye or the commonsense humor of Bob Burdette. 

In the string of paragraphs clipped from the 
funny columns all over the land, there is material 
for a surer " Elixir of Life " than can ever be educed 
from pulverized rabbit or solution of French Guinea 
Pig. 

Let us not forget the pioneers in this good work, 
rough and coarse, but individual and interesting, 
they are not surpassed by their successors. 

The special characteristics of American humor 
can be traced back to the dry maxims and shrewd 
sense of Benjamin Franklin when the habits of our 
people were simpler and the scope of the press nar- 
rower. A good joke or story found no means of 
general circulation, unless through the humble me- 
dium of the traveling clown or negro minstrel. Even 
in the enterprising newspaper of the present day 
there appears now and then some weather-beaten 
pleasantry, which, to the boy of forty years ago, is 
suggestive of the burnt cork of the minstrel or the 
cap and bells of the circus clown, now almost crowded 



266 Our Early Newspaper Wits 

out of the arena by better things. In the rush and 
worry of modern life the humorist has found a larger 
field ; many brilliant names have been added to the 
roll of newspaper wits, but those first in the field 
have never been eclipsed. 



MADAME DE GENUS. 



Only France, that land of fascinating- women and 
phenomenal individualities, could have produced a 
Madame de Genlis. Brilliant, yet tedious ; sensible, 
absurd ; amiable, resentful ; eccentric, conventional ; 
the author of nearly one hundred volumes — sober 
works on education, and worldly novels of very 
questionable influence, poems and history, biography 
and botany, natural history and etiquette, religion 
and malicious scandal ; alternating between court 
and convent for nearly a century ; adored and hated ; 
praised and vindicated; regarded as a saint and 
sinner ; a shameless intriguante and a French. 
Hannah More ! Was she not a captivating bundle 
of opposite qualities ? I cannot claim genius for 
my heroine, nor a large amount of the piety and 
prudery she professed ; but as the Governor of 
Princes (for Governor she would be called) while a 
most successful writer for children, when stories for 
children were almost unknown ; as a popular novel- 
ist ; as an extraordinary and entertaining person, 
whose life affords both amusement and instruction 
— she is a marked character, a power in her day, a 
type of the ancient nobility of France ; as regards 



268 Madame De Genlis 

her social life, of a vanity that was at once sublime 
and ridiculous. 

She was born on the 25th of January, 1746, on a 
little estate in Burgundy, such a puny infant that it 
was not thought worth while to dress her ; so she 
was sewed up in a down pillow, and the atom was 
laid in an armchair, to struggle with life or die. 
In a few moments the corpulent mayor, almost blind, 
came to pay his visit of congratulation, and separat- 
ing the huge flaps of his overcoat, was just about to 
sit down in that very chair when the nurse screamed 
and pulled him away. And in her Memoirs she 
remarks, with her usual conceit : "It was not the 
good nurse who saved me ; no, it was God himself, 
acting by her instrumentality. He had given me a 
mission upon earth, which he decreed should be 
fulfilled." 

She had the usual joys, sorrows, and hair-breadth 
'scapes of childhood — was nearly drowned at eight- 
een months — soon after tumbled into the kitchen 
fire — had a dangerous fall at five — but bore a 
charmed life. 

Her father had purchased a large estate, beauti- 
fully situated. Its chateau resembled those de- 
scribed by Mrs. Radcliffe ; ancient and tumble- 
down, with old towers and immense courtyards, on 
the opposite side of the Loire, near the famous 
Abbey of Sept-Font's, where perpetual silence 
reigned ; and her father, when the children were 
too noisy in their evening games, would propose 



Madame De Genlis 269 

they should play here the holy fathers of Sept-Font, 
which changed the riotous frolic into peaceful 
pantomime. 

When the little girl was six years old her mother 
took her to Paris to visit an aunt, and she describes 
graphically the horrors to which she was subjected, 
in order to be made stylish and graceful. She had 
two teeth pulled out, was squeezed into stiff corsets, 
which pinched her terribly, her feet were imprisoned 
in tight shoes, so that she could not take a step 
without pain, three or four thousand curl papers 
(this is her estimate) were used to twist her hair, and 
she wore, for the first time, a hoop. Then, in order 
to get rid of her country attitudes, she had an iron 
collar put round her neck ; and as the unfortunate 
little tot squinted slightly, she was obliged to w^ear 
goggles four hours each day, and was, besides, for- 
bidden to run, jump, or ask questions ! Paris was 
anything but a paradise to her then ; but soon came 
the great ceremony of her public baptism, after 
which (loaded with candies and playthings) she was 
taken to the opera, and life looked bright again. 
She was, she tells us, " a child of remarkable sweet- 
ness of disposition." 

The next great event was her being received as 
a Canoness of the noble chapter of St. Alix, as an 
honorary novitiate ; the Grand Prior having dis- 
cerned the " aureole of moral grandeur upon her 
youthful brow." This dignity confers the title of 
Countess. Madame la Comtesse de Lancy was con- 



270 Madame De Genlis 

ducted in pomp to the church, a consecrated ring- 
placed on her finger, and she was decorated with the 
signs of the order. 

Her education was almost totally neglected, for 
her governess had, as she expresses it, " nothing of 
profane knowledge " ; so history and other serious 
studies were soon abandoned, and she was never 
taught to write at all. Her mother was busy with 
society and her own interests, and never saw her 
except at meals. Her father, a handsome man, fond 
of music and philosophy and hunting, seemed only 
anxious to conquer her womanish antipathies to 
mice and toads and spiders, he insisted on her tam- 
ing a mouse, and frequently obliged her to catch 
spiders with her fingers and hold toads in her hands, 
but never succeeded in removing the aversion. 

At eight Felicite dictated romances and comedies 
to Mademoiselle de Mars, when she did not know 
how to form a single letter ; and she remarks : 
" Even in the reveries of my infancy there was a 
foundation of love, of glory, and of virtue, which in 
a child must be thought remarkable." Her brother, 
she sa3'-s, was far from being so brilliant and remark- 
able a child as she was ! 

A fondness for music and for teaching was 
inborn. She used to get out of her window by a 
rope, and, sliding down to the terrace, gather the 
boys of the village about her to teach them the little 
she knew — poetry she had committed to memory, 
and bits from the Catechism. In after years she was 



Madame De Genlis 271 

ambitious to officiate as schoolma'am in general to all 
France, and felt abundantly able to fill the position. 

In 1755 her father, of whom we hear little, went 
to Paris and remained eighteen months. Her mother 
resolved to prepare 2, fete to celebrate his return, and 
composed a comedietta in the pastoral style, in 
which the pretty daughter took the part of Love. 
Tragedies were also performed, and we imagine the 
fashionable wife was more anxious to enliven the 
dull monotony of the country than to honor her hus- 
band, whose long absence was endured with great 
composure. As Iphigenia, Felicite was gorgeously 
arrayed in cherry silk and silver, trimmed with 
sables ; but her costume as Cupid was so becoming 
that she wore it regularly. The wings were sup- 
pressed on Sundays, and she adopted a red riding- 
hood cloak ; but during the week she rambled and 
danced over the fields with a short rose-colored dress 
trimmed with lace and artificial flowers, blue wings, 
long hair floating, quiver on shoulder, and bow in 
hand ; and this chronic masquerade was indulged in 
for nearly a year. This alone was enough to tinge 
her whole life with romance. Her talent for acting 
was always remarkable. 

Her next attire was a regular boy's dress, and she 
took daily lessons in fencing, as in dancing. She 
praises her own agility, grace, and musical skill at 
this age, and also declares that she could read char- 
acter from the face with unerring instinct. She 
delighted in building air-castles, figuring for herself 



272 Madame De Genlis 

an extraordinary and brilliant destiny, with persecu- 
tions and reverses of. fortune no stranger than those 
which actually occurred. 

Lovers came while she was in short dresses, and 
kept coming in crowds till she was quite an old lady 
— she, of course, always surprised, always cool and 
cruel, with often fatal effect. " I was but eleven 
years old," she writes, " and small of my age, when 
I inspired the first passion — at least, the first avoivcd 
passion — quite unconsciously. I even felt shocked, 
grieved, when the son of one Pinat, an apothecary, 
proclaimed a devotion which he could no longer con- 
ceal, in verses glowing with a Sappho's fire. If 
there was no other proof of the distraction of mind, 
the delirium of love, with which Louis Pinat was 
afflicted, it would be manifest in the fact that he had 
overlooked the impassable gulf which must ever 
separate noblemen and apothecaries." She advised 
him to leave that part of the country before the 
mischief already done was irremediable. He yielded 
and departed for Paris. Another, conscious of the 
hopeless disparity in years, sought safety in flight, 
and ultimately succeeded in banishing her image 
from his memory. A young and promising lawyer 
was the next victim ; refused, he at first contem- 
plated suicide, but changed his mind, and emigrated 
to St. Domingo. Poor Baron de Zeolachen, Colonel 
of Swiss Guards and eighty years of age, fell hope- 
lessly in love with the irresistible maiden ; she was 



Madame De Genlis 273 

inexorable as ever, and " his days " (records his 
destroyer) " were shortened." 

The next winter was spent in Paris, and she re- 
members listening to Marmontel as he read his tale 
of " The Self-styled Philosopher " to her aunt, little 
thinking that the quiet girl in the corner would one 
day be one of his severest critics and rouse his bitter 
enmity. She now began to compose verses very 
creditable for a child. One gentleman thought them 
wonderful, copied several to show to his friends, and 
presented the poetess with a copy of Rousseau's Odes 
and Sacred Poems (a French lyric poet, not to be 
confounded with Jean Jacques). One of the little 
red morocco volumes was always in her pocket ; she 
committed all to memory, and recited them with 
great expression. The giver urged her to read con- 
stantly, but this was impossible, as her aunt was a 
woman of the world and had few books ; but she suc- 
ceeded in procuring the libretto of a Gascon opera, 
and had fallen asleep while reading in bed ; the can- 
dle set fire to the curtains, and her mother, stealing 
in with a pleasant surprise — an elegant bracelet, 
with her miniature set in opals and emeralds, which 
she intended to put on her arm — found the chamber 
full of suffocating smoke, and in ten minutes later 
the unconscious prodigy would have been lost to the 
world. 

Her father, after some despairing struggles 
against adverse fate, sold his marquisate and chateau 
to meet the demands of creditors, and went to St. 



274 Madame De Genlis 

Domingo, hoping to reestablish his fortune by a 
speculation in sugar. Failing in this, he was taken 
prisoner by an English ship when returning to 
France, and carried to Launceton, where he formed 
an intimacy with a fellow-prisoner — Comte de 
Genlis, a younger son of a noble French family, who 
had served in the navy in the East Indies. Being 
powerfully connected at the French Court, the Count 
was soon exchanged ; and returning to Paris, pro- 
cured the liberation of M. Ducrest, who lived but a 
short time afterward. 

Felicite and her mother had been visitors at the 
country house of a rich old gentleman, eccentric and 
benevolent, who was, to quote from Madame's mem- 
oirs, " enchanted with the little talents I possessed, 
and said often with a profound sigh in looking at me, 
'What a pity that she is but thirteen ! ' " She played 
wonderfully on harp and guitar, and sang and danced 
like a professional. It is said that Mademoiselle 
Ducrest supported herself at this time by giving les- 
sons on the harp, which was eminently creditable. 
In the French Biographic Universelle, which devotes 
many pages to her career, it is said that she danced 
and played at the houses of her friends, with a charge 
for admission : she does not mention either fact her- 
self. Lovers again pleaded their suits. One old fel- 
low wooed her with a huge packet sent by his valet, 
containing his genealogy at full length. She liked 
best a rich and handsome widower of twenty-six, but 
•was determined to marry no one but a man of quality 



Madame De Genlis 275 

and belonging to the Court. She says frankly, that 
she had received so much praise that vanity had be- 
come her ruling motive. She does say : " In spite of 
all the praises with which I was loaded, I was ill at 
ease in these brilliant parties, and I discovered two 
things: first, that one ought not to enter into the 
great world, but when one can be on a footing with 
others as to dress ; and secondly, that if it had not 
l)een for my talents these persons would have had no 
wish to invite me." 

But the coming man with all the requisite qualifi- 
cations is almost here. Her father, who carried 
everywhere with him a box, on which was the por- 
trait of his daughter playing the harp, had shown her 
picture to the brave young soldier, already decorated 
with the cross of St. Louis. To him he read her 
bright letters, and those of her mother, full of praise 
for her many accomplishments, and glowing accounts 
of social success. Genlis was about to be married to 
a lady possessed of 40,000 francs a year. But he was 
genuinely in love. The mother and daughter had 
retired to a convent after the father's death, and 
thither the Count followed them, and was soon mar- 
ried secretly and at midnight. It was a union with 
love on one side, pure ambition on the other. His 
rich relatives were angry and disgusted, and refused 
to see either for some years. 

When he was ordered to join his regiment, the 
bride, only fifteen, was placed in a convent, where 
her vivacity and irrepressible love of excitement 



276 Madame De Genlis 

were constantly bubbling over in wild pranks with 
the staid old nuns ; running about the corridors at 
night in strange disguises, sometimes attired as the 
devil himself, with horns on her merry head, and her 
pretty face blackened. Or she would steal into the 
cells of deaf old sisters, and paint their withered 
cheeks with rouge, or patch them for mutual surprise, 
when they rose for matins, and many a dance was 
given in her apartments, music being provided by an 
aged fiddler. Her mornings were devoted to music 
and reading, and long letters to her mother and her 
husband. Little plays were composed in honor of a 
visit from her mother, from which she continued to 
get a great deal of fun, allotting the different charac- 
ters in a most inappropriate and ridiculous way, and 
persuading the duped performers that they were 
irresistible. Indeed, one old creature who acted as 
her maid, gray-haired, with bad complexion, and 
minus two front teeth, was induced to appear as a 
shepherdess, with a short white petticoat bordered 
with bright ribbon, and wearing on one side of her 
head a jaunty little straw hat decked with flowers. 
Extolled extravagantly for her acting and graces, 
she received it all with amazing credulity, and when 
the naughty instigator of all this mischief proposed 
that this becoming and appropriate costume be worn 
constantly, the humbugged fright consented, and 
paraded about with a crook, to the delight of all ob- 
servers. 

The school-girlish Madame was so happy at the 



Madame De Genlis 277 

convent, that when her husband came to take her to 
their home at Genlis, she pleaded for one month 
more, " and was much surprised at receiving" a dry 
and decided refusal" — which is a very Frenchy 
picture. 

Her practical jokes in her own house were ex- 
quisitely ludicrous in conception and admirably car- 
ried out, and her vagaries of conduct must have 
caused much astonishment to her more commonplace 
neighbors. With her sister-in-law, both dressed as 
peasant women, she went about buying milk, and 
they then indulged in the luxury of a bath in milk, 
the surface strewn with rose leaves. She once lost 
her way qn purpose while on a wild boar hunt, just 
for an adventure, hoping to find a mysterious castle, 
with inmates full of wit and courtesy eager to detain 
her as their guest. After galloping for three hours, 
very hungry, and no castle in view, she found that, 
like Goldsmith's matron in "She Stoops to Conquer," 
she was nearer home than she supposed. She had 
given her husband a great fright and received a se- 
vere scolding-. When laughed at as a fine lady at a 
picnic on account of her embroidered white slippers, 
she swallowed a live fish to prove that she was not 
dainty. 

But now she began to study in earnest. Educa- 
tion she had none ; as for history, she was so igno- 
rant she did not know where to begin, and never had 
heard of geometry ; she at first had no guide in her 
reading. But she was determined to lose no oppor- 



278 Madame De Genlis 

ttinity of learning ; it was her plan throughout life 
to ask explanations of what she did not understand ; 
and she kept a commonplace book by her and wrote 
in it each day. These three habits would make any 
young lady well-informed. 

She gained some idea of field labor and of garden- 
ing, went to see cider made, visited the houses of the 
village tradesmen where they were at work — the 
carpenter, weaver, basket-maker, etc. — and con- 
stantly practised medicine at Genlis in partnership 
with the village barber — a wise physician — confin- 
ing her prescriptions to simple drinks and nourish- 
ing broths, moderating the barber's rage for emetics, 
and bled the peasants, giving thirt}'- sous after each 
bleeding. As was natural, she soon had a great num- 
ber of patients, all anxious to be bled. Phlebotomy 
was the rage until the Count complained of the ex- 
pense of this treatment. With all this she learned 
the game of billiards, and painted flowers and prac- 
ticed on some musical instrument every day. She 
played well on half a dozen — was a performer on 
the bag-pipe, besides harp, guitar, violin, harpischord, 
and organ. 

She had real genius for entertaining her friends, 
and on one occasion planned a quadrille called the 
Proverbs, in which each couple formed a proverb by 
their costume, while the figures also represented a 
proverb, " Run backwards before you leap." She 
composed the air herself. Unfortunately for the 
success of this novel diversion, some envious gen- 



Madame De Genlis 279 

tlemen who were not invited to join the dance sent 
a Savoyard dressed as a cat into their midst, creating 
a great excitement. His proverb was, " Beware of 
waking a sleeping cat." 

With the birth of her daughter Caroline, the 
young mother became more serious, and her first 
real work was, " Reflections of a Mother Twenty 
Years of Age." This manuscript was lost, but many 
of its thoughts were transferred to her book, " Adele 
and Theodore," which was translated into English 
by Misses Edgeworth and Holcroft. Soon after her 
twentieth birthday, she was presented at court by 
the stately uncle and aunt of her husband, now com- 
pletely reconciled. 

Her eight volumes of autobiography, written 
after she was eighty, although absurd from her con- 
stant habit of self-adulation, are full of interesting 
sketches of distinguished men and women, and 
illustrate the history and social life of a century 
agone. In these recollections she confesses every- 
one's faults — but her own. The second volume 
opens with a ludicrous mistake of hers in regard to 
Rousseau. Prenele, a famous comic actor of that day, 
who could imitate Rousseau to the life, confides to 
Count de Genlis his intention of calling on Madame 
as the eccentric philosopher. The little lady was 
told of the coming joke, when, strange to say, both 
gentlemen forgot all about it ; and when she heard 
that Rousseau was anxious to make her acquaint- 
ance, and hear her play on the harp, she was in 



280 Madame De Genlis 

great glee, received the actor with a merry laugh, 
sang several of Rousseau's songs with careless ease, 
and urged him to come next day to dine. It was 
not till his departure that the misunderstanding was 
explained. Then her husband had his turn of 
laughing immoderately ; and it was decided that the 
great man should never know her mistake. 

In speaking of his works, he said : " I am not a 
Catholic, but no one has spoken of the gospel with 
more conviction and feeling." He talked admirably 
of music, and was a real connoisseur, yet his own 
compositions were not good. His sole means of 
subsistence was copying music, which he did with 
singular skill. He must have been extremely un- 
reasonable and immensely conceited. One evening 
when Madame de Genlis had the loan of a grated 
box, with private staircase, at the opera, she per- 
suaded Rousseau to go with them. He said that he 
carefully avoided showing himself in public, but 
consented. On entering the box he would not allow 
the grate to be put down, saying he was sure 
Madame would not like it. She was too prettily 
dressed to remain hidden, and as she insisted, he 
actually held it up, saying he would conceal himself 
behind her. In a moment he put his head forward, 
on purpose to be seen, and again and again, till sev- 
eral persons called out, " There is Rousseau ! " and 
the cry passed through the house, but no applause. 
He left as soon as the curtain fell, in a furious and 
implacable state, really enraged to think he had not 



Madame De Genlis 281 

produced a sensation ; but asserting that he would 
never see Madame again, as she had taken him there 
to be shown off, as wild beasts are exhibited at a fair. 
And she really never met him again. The Mar- 
chioness of Pompadour having succeeded in putting 
Voltaire and others at her feet, tried, as she said, to 
tame Rosseau ; but a letter she received from him 
disgusted her from making any more advances. 
" He is an owl," said she one day to Madame de 
Mirepoix. " Yes," said the Marechale, " but he is 
Minerva's." 

At twenty-four Madame de Genlis was made a 
lady of honor in the household of the Due de 
Chartres, afterwards Duke of Orleans, known during 
the Revolution as Egalite, a profligate patron and 
dangerous mischief-maker. The society of the 
Palais Royal was of course the best in Paris, and 
Madame de Genlis was a great favorite with all the 
gentlemen, and with the ladies who were not 
envious. But she kept up her studies with marvel- 
ous enthusiasm, always making extracts as she read. 
She persuaded the Duchess of Chartres to learn 
geography, and even taught her to spell, afterwards 
giving her lessons in history and mythology. She 
had also her secretary writing her notes and letters. 
Still, she kept up her own embroidery, painting, and 
music. She kept up her practice on the harp and 
instruments, and collected a fine cabinet of shells, 
minerals, and stones, which was afterwards confis- 
cated and sold for the benefit of the nation ; and she 



282 Madame De Genlis 

continued to write comedies. Was there ever such 
a versatile and busy woman ? 

When Gliick went to Paris to have his operas 
performed, he completely bewitched Madame de 
Genlis, who was such an enthusiastic musician. 
She went to all the rehearsals, and every evening to 
the opera, and had Gliick and other famous per- 
formers come to her soirdes twice a week. She sang- 
for them, and played his overtures on the harp ; but 
at last felt that " music, Gliick, and the opera had 
acquired too great a power over her." So she made 
a resolution never again to go to opera or theater, 
and she kept her vow faithfully, great as was the 
sacrifice. She makes this frank comment: "I sin- 
cerely wish now that religion had been my motive 
in this, but it was only the taste for study and the 
pride of being distinguished." 

She now took up the study of the English lan- 
guage, and avers that she could read the poets easily 
in five months. Determined never to lose any time, 
she would read in the coach while traveling, and 
carried one of her little books of extracts in her 
pocket to read in odd moments. In traveling, she 
would lead into conversation anyone she met who 
could teach her anything, and then write down what 
she had collected. Having heard that one gentle- 
man had written in a few years four quarto volumes 
by employing the ten or fifteen minutes before his 
wife came to dinner, she copied one thousand verses 
from various authors while waiting for the Duchesse 



Madame De Genlis 283 

de Chartres, who was always a quarter of an hour 
late. It was a curious and valuable collection, be- 
ginning with the oldest poetry known in France. 
She went often to the Jardin des Plantes and the 
Cabinet of Natural History, and met there Buffon, 
who became an intimate friend. 

In 1774, Louis XV died, and the unfortunate 
Louis XVI was king. The next year Madame de 
Genlis spent in traveling. While at Geneva she 
visited Voltaire ; she had from a child disliked him 
for his infidel sentiments, but still desired his ad- 
miration. " It was the custom for ladies to become 
agitated, grow ,pale, and even to faint on seeing 
Voltaire ; they threw themselves into his arms, 
stammered and wept and adored." 

This was the etiquette of a presentation at Ferney, 
so that ordinary courtesy seemed almost a slight. 
But Voltaire, perceiving her perplexity, kissed her 
little hand, and the agony was over. She writes : 
" During the whole time of dinner Voltaire was far 
from agreeable. He seemed always in a passion 
with his servants, crying out to them with such 
strength of lungs that I often started involuntarily." 
"But it was the result of habit, and the servants did 
not mind it in the least. He gave her a drive 
through the village to see the houses he had built 
and the benevolent establishments founded by him. 
Such gross flattery as he had received had spoiled 
him. He regarded himself as an oracle, and could 
not brook contradiction or criticism. Imagine, then, 



284 Madame De Genlis. 

his feelings when reduced to absolute subjection by 
a page whom he had vexed. " When Frederick the 
Great made short excursions he often asked Voltaire 
to accompany him. On one of these trips Voltaire 
was alone in a post-chaise following the royal car- 
riage. A young page whom Voltaire had severely 
scolded, as he thought unjustly, resolved to be 
revenged ; accordingly, when he was sent in advance 
to have horses ready, he told all the post-masters 
and postilions that the king had an old monkey, of 
which he was so very fond that he delighted in 
dressing him up like a person belonging to the 
court, and that he always took this a;iimal with him ; 
that the monkey cared for no one but the king, and 
was extremely mischievous ; and that, therefore, if 
he attempted to get out of the chaise, they must pre- 
vent him. After receiving this notice all the ser- 
vants of the different post-houses, whenever Voltaire 
attempted to leave his carriage, opposed his exit, 
and when he thrust out his hand to open the door, 
he always received two or three sharp blows with a 
stick upon his fingers, followed by shouts of laughter. 
Voltaire, who did not understand a word of German, 
could not demand an explanation of these singular 
proceedings ; his fury became extreme, but it only 
served to redouble the gayety of the post-masters, 
and a large crowd constantly assembled, in conse- 
quence of the page's report, to see ' the king's 
monkey ' and to hoot at him. What completed the 
anger of Voltaire was that the king thought the 



Madame De Genlis 285 

trick so good that he refused to punish the inventor ; 
so the vengeance of the young page was complete." 

Madame de Genlis's first book was a collection of 
her plays and poems, published entirely for the ben- 
efit of a noble man, who was most unjustly impris- 
oned for life if he did not pay a much larger sum 
than he or his friends could raise. One gentleman, 
unknown to her, but touched by the generous effort, 
paid three thousand francs for one copy ; the others 
sold so well that in six days all were gone, with a 
clear profit of forty-six thousand francs. The injured 
party accepted the sum, the prisoner was set free. 
This work was translated into all the modern lan- 
guages, and the Empress of Russia had a version 
made with Russian text opposite the French. 

And now comes a very marked change. The 
Due and Duchesse de Chartres proposed that 
Madame de Genlis take the entire charge of the 
instruction of their children. With her mania for 
teaching, and the honor of being offered a position 
which the wisest men of the realm desired and cov- 
eted — which Fenelon had filled in another reign — 
she could not refuse the offer. M. de Genlis, who 
had not accompanied her to Paris, being informed 
of the Duke's proposition, demurred, and requested 
his wife to join him in the country. She refused to 
do so, and they never saw each other again. It is 
necessary just here to allude to the shadow on 
Madame's character in her supposed intimacy with 
the Duke. Her affected unconsciousness of any 



286 Madame De Genlis 

scandal and her display of prudery is in strange con- 
trast to the convictions of the public. The Queen, 
prejudiced by the complaints of the wife, excluded 
her from the opportunities of display at court which 
she would have gloried in, and she never could 
obtain either a private or public audience. After 
accepting the position she at once left the Palais 
Royal, and retired to a pavilion built on her own 
plan at the Convent Belle Chasse. She was then 
thirty-one. She gave up dancing and rouge, then 
universally worn. With her usual frankness (on all 
subjects but one) she says: "It is singular that 
though I had always possessed religious sentiments, 
all the sacrifices of a devotee which I have made have 
have not been inspired by religion ; and this is a 
reflection which afflicts me." She gave up rouge, 
because she had said it would be no sacrifice to her, 
and no one seemed to believe her ; so she made a 
bet with the Duke that she would renounce rouge 
on the 25th of January, 1776, and kept her word. 

Now began her earnest life-work with the four 
children of the Duke, a daughter and three boys, the 
eldest being Louis Philippe, afterward King of 
France. Like Madame de Maintenon, she was 
extremely practical — a model housewife — and with 
an eye to every detail, settling the accounts daily, 
while everything was rendered useful as a means of 
education. The tapestry of the princess's room was 
painted in oil, and on a blue ground were repre- 
sented busts of the seven kings of Rome, and the 



Madame De Genlis 287 

emperors and empresses down to Constantine the 
Great. Over the doors were historical scenes. The 
staircases were covered with maps, which could be 
taken down for lessons. Even the fire-screens, 
hand-screens, and tops of the doors had lessons en- 
graved on them ; while in letters of gold, over the 
grate which shut them out from the world, were 
these words of Addison, taken from the Spectator : 
" True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy 
to pomp and noise." Her own daughters, two 
beautiful girls, were educated with the Prince's 
family. 

During the first eighteen months in this sheltered 
retreat she published several volumes of her Theater 
of Education, all highly praised by the press and 
critics of that time. Madame d'Epinay was espe- 
cially delighted, and urged a visit. Here she met 
Saint Lambert and Madame du Deffand. 

She was now thoroughly in her element, and led, 
as she says, a delicious life. She was the first gov- 
erness or tutor of princes in France who taught the 
languages by means of conversation. There was an 
English and Italian maid, and the little princesses 
had an English child for a playmate ; one of the 
valets was a well-educated German, another Italian, 
and the princes were given a good teacher of Eng- 
lish. They now removed to St. Leu, a charming 
residence, with a fine park. A small garden was laid 
out for each of her pupils, and they dug in the dirt 
like ordinary children, and planted flowers and veg- 



288 Madame De Genlis 

etables. A botanist and chemist were attached to 
the house, also a teacher of drawing. A theater was 
built, where the children played pantomimes and her 
own pieces. She says : " In the winter at Paris I had 
a turning machine put into my ante-chamber, and in 
recreation hours all the children, as well as myself, 
learned to turn. I thus acquired, with them, all the 
trades in which strength is not required ; making, 
for instance, pocket-books and morocco portfolios, 
which looked as well as those of English manufac- 
ture." They also made baskets, tapes, ribbons, gauze, 
pasteboard, and plans in relief, artificial flowers, grat- 
ings for libraries in brass wire, marbled paper, gilt 
frames, all sorts of work in hair, and even tried their 
hands at wigs, and the boys learnt cabinet-making. 
The Duke of Valois, with the aid of his brother, 
made a large press and a table with drawers for a 
poor peasant woman of St. Leu. This was their 
amusement. " Beside their palace of the five orders 
of architecture, which they could build and take down 
at pleasure, I made them make various tools and uten- 
sils, the interior of a laboratory, with retorts, crucibles, 
and alembics, and the interior of a cabinet of natural 
history. These were afterwards displayed in the 
gallery of the Palais Royal, and have since been 
placed in the Louvre. I was very proud to see the 
public admire the playthings I had invented for my 
pupils." The princes were taught to swim and row, 
and the Duke of Orleans bought an estate by the sea, 
where six months were passed studying shells, fishes, 



Madame De Genlis 289 

and sea-plants, and learning in a practical way about 
ships. During one winter they were taken to a hos- 
pital, to dress the wounds of the poor. 

Then her husband inherited a large estate, loo,- 
ooo francs a year. He urged his wife to leave her 
pupils and return to him ; but ambition, and sincere 
attachment to the children, and self-love carried the 
day, and she refused, which was afterwards a deep 
grief to her. In her words : " In spite of the argu- 
ments of M. de Genlis, I persisted in a resolution 
which has cost me dear. If I had fulfilled my real 
duty, which was to rejoin him, especially when he 
desired and entreated it so earnestly, I might easily 
have induced him to leave France ; we should have 
lived comfortably in a foreign land, and he would 
not have perished on a scaffold ! This terrible reflec- 
tion causes me eternal remorse ; since his death it 
never leaves me." 

The assembly of the French Academy in 1783 
gave the " Prize of Utility " to Madame d'Epinay's 
" Conversations of Emilia " in preference to Madame 
de Genlis's " Adele and Theodore," a manual of edu- 
cation — a matter of intense surprise to the latter ; 
but she consoled herself by attributing the decision 
to her having spoken too favorably of religion and 
too lightly of philosophy. " But how," says Grimm, 
" could the vengeance of philosophy wound the high 
piety of our illustrious governess ? Can she who re- 
nounces the toilet, rouge, and all the pleasures, all 
the vanities of life, still regret its frivolous and pro- 



290 Madame De Genlis 

fane laurels ? " The Duchess of Grammont said with 
her usual frankness that she was overjoyed at the 
success of Madame d Epinay, because she hoped that 
Madame de Genlis would die with envy, which would 
be an excellent thing ; or that she would revenge 
herself by a good satire, which would be good again ; 
and lastly, because she wished all the world to per- 
ceive, what she had for some time suspected, the 
Academy to be falling into dotage. 

At Belle Chasse an intimacy was formed with 
Madame Necker. She made the first visit, bringing 
her daughter, then sixteen. Madame de Genlis never 
liked Madame de Stael. This is her first criticism : 
" This young lady was not pretty, but she was very 
animated, and though she spoke a deal too much, she 
spoke cleverly." Madame Necker had educated her 
on a poor plan, permitting her to pass much of her 
time in her salon, among the crowd of beaux esprit s 
who were constantly to be found there, while the 
young miss discussed with them on love and the 
passions. The solitude of her chamber and a few 
good books would have been more to her advantage. 
She learned to talk fast and much, without any re- 
flection, and has written in the same manner. She 
had read little, and all her knowledge was superficial. 
She had collected in her works not the result of 
sound reading, but an infinite number of recollec- 
tions and incoherent conversations. Madame Necker 
was a virtuous, calm, reserved person, without any 
fancy. She was studied in all she did, and arranged 



Madame De Genlis 291 

beforehand a part for all situations. The Chevalier 
de Chastellux picked up a little book while waiting- 
for Madame Necker to appear — as he was too early 
for dinner — and found a careful preparation of her 
subjects for conversation during the dinner. His 
own name caught his eye, and he read : " I must talk 
to the Chevalier de Chastellux about Public Happi- 
ness and Agatha" — two of his works. All were to 
be complimented in some skillful way. The dinner 
was peculiarly enjoyable to the amused chevalier, as 
he saw that Madame repeated word for word the re- 
marks in her book. Madame de Genlis, throughout 
her memoirs, gives the idea that Madame de Stael 
was a failure, but that if she had been allowed to edu- 
cate her, it would have been vastly different, saying : 
" I have often regretted sincerely that she had not 
been my daughter or my pupil. I should then have 
given her good literary principles, just ideas, and 
unaffected manners. With such an education, joined 
to her own talents and generous mind, she would 
have been an accomplished person, and the first 
female author of our day." 

A short time before the Revolution, in 1785, she 
visited England, and was received, by her own ac- 
count, with unusual honor, which she writes of as 
frankly as of her failings. She says : " No woman is 
allowed to enter the House of Commons, but that 
assembly, by a special order, invited me to be pres- 
ent at one of the debates. I was not allowed to intro- 
duce any other woman." This was one of Sheridan's 



292 Madame De Genlis 

practical jokes. "Tragedy was not played in the 
summer, yet, in honor to me, Hamlet was performed 
at one of the theaters. An account of all these things 
was inserted in the English newspapers, with the 
most complimentary notices of myself. There ap- 
peared also in the journals an infinite number of 
verses in my honor. I received many marks of inter- 
est and esteem from the most distinguished persons 
in England; among others. Fox, Sheridan, the Duch- 
ess of Devonshire, Mr. Burke, and Miss Burney. The 
Prince of Wales invited me to an entertainment, and 
the Queen invited me to Windsor. This was a great 
distinction, for she never received foreigners there. 
Lord Mansfield, the celebrated English judge, re- 
quested permission to visit me. Mr. Horace Walpole 
invited me to breakfast in his Gothic priory." 

" I read a great many English works, and was 
struck with the absurd contempt which the writers 
of this country affect for other nations. With what 
injustice have they criticised our literature, at the 
same time they were stealing from or copying our 
writers ! How are we represented on the English 
stage ? The French are always treated there as 
weak fops, and what seems still more singular, as 
cowards. Let us compare this with the generous 
good feeling of our authors, who have so highly 
praised English writers and the English nation." 

Walpole writes : " I will read no more of Rous- 
seau ; his Confessions disgusted me beyond any book 
I ever opened. His Hen — the schoolmistress, Mad- 



Madame De Genlis 293 

ame de Genlis — is arrived in London. I nauseate 
Jier, too ; the eggs of education that he and she both 
laid could not be hatched till the chickens were ready 
to die of old age. I revere genius, I have a dear 
friendship for common sense ; I have a partiality for 
professed nonsense ; but I abhor extravagance, that 
is given for the quintessence of sense, and affectation 
that pretends to be philosophy." But when he met 
her, the prejudice vanished, and he says : " Her per- 
son is agreeable, and she seems to have been pretty. 
Her conversation is natural and reasonable, not pre- 
cisive and affected, and searching to be eloquent, as 
I had expected." But he joins with other men in 
ridiculing the office she held. "The Due de Char- 
tres has made Madame de Genlis governess of his 
children. Why should not Madame de Schwellen- 
berg be governess to our prince, and Bishop Hurd 
wet nurse ? " 

In Fanny Burney's Diary (1785) there are many 
allusions to Madame de Genlis. She speaks of her at 
first as the " sweetest and most accomplished French 
woman she ever met with," and is, for a long time, 
completely charmed ; but tales, true or false, were so 
often forced into her unwilling ears, that she says : 
" Notwithstanding the most ardent admiration of her 
talents, and a zest yet greater for her engaging 
society and elegantly lively and winning manners, I 
yet dared no longer come within the precincts of her 
fascinating allurements." 

The biographer of Burke, describing Madame de 



294 Madame De Genlis 

Genlis's visit to Butler's Court (1792) gives an un- 
pleasant anecdote : " Her great ambition was to do, 
or be thought to do, everything ; to possess a universal 
genius both in mind and mechanical powers beyond 
the attainments of her own or even the other sex. 
A ring which she wore, of very curious, indeed, ex- 
quisite workmanship, having attracted the notice of 
Sir Joshua Reynolds, he inquired by what good for- 
tune it had come into her possession, and received 
for answer that it was executed by herself. Sir 
Joshua stared, but made no reply. " I have done 
with her," said he, the first time he was alone with 
Mr. Burke afterwards. "To have the assurance to 
tell me such a tale ! Why, my dear sir, it is an antique ; 
no living artist in Europe can equal it." 

She carried back and introduced into France, 
where it was unknown, the moss rose, as Pope intro- 
duced the weeping willow into England by planting 
some shoots which were sent him with a basket of 
figs. 

Soon after her return the Revolution began, and 
her life was full of troubles — charges of sympathy 
with the Liberals, and serious danger from associa- 
tion with the children of the Duchess of Orleans, 
whom she was accused of estranging from their 
mother. 

To all these attacks she pleaded " Not guilty," and 
wrote a book to prove it, insisting that she was at all 
times a Royalist. From her account, you judge her 
to be peculiarly conscientious and pure, resisting all 



Madame De Genlis 295 

admirers, and looking with severity upon damaged 
reputation. She was either a hypocrite or grossly 
slandered. Let us give her the benefit of the doubt. 

Her husband, who fearlessly expressed himself 
opposed to the execution of the king, was punished 
on the scaffold. The Duke, also, was killed. After 
Madame de Genlis had wandered about with Made- 
moiselle d'Orleans for a year or two, the princess was 
recalled, and her lonely governess went to Berlin, 
where she gave lessons in literature, and designed 
patterns for a print factory, and wrote novels, thus 
supporting herself very comfortably. She said she 
knew fifty-two trades by which she could earn her 
living. Talleyrand, also an emigrd with Madame de 
Stael, writing to her from Philadelphia, says of 
America: "This country is a place where honest 
men may prosper, though not, to be sure, quite so 
well as rogues, who, as may be expected, have many 
advantages on their side." She remained in exile 
for nine years. At Hamburg she received a visit 
from Klopstock, who talked at her steadily for three 
hours, mostly of himself, and retired highly pleased 
with her conversational ability. 

In Paris, when she was allowed to return, in 1801, 
everything had strangely, sadly altered. She said : 
" Everything seemed new to me. I felt like a 
stranger who stops at every step to look around. I 
could scarcely recognize the streets, of which all the 
names were changed. I found philosophers substi- 
tuted for saints. I saw passing hackney coaches, 



296 Madame De Genlis 

which I recognized as the confiscated carriages of 
my friends ; and in walking, I saw on the stalls books 
which bore on their bindings the coats of arms of 
my acquaintances, and in shops their portraits ex- 
hibited for sale. Three-fourths of the unfortunate 
nobles whom these pictures represented had been 
guillotined, and the rest, despoiled of everything, 
were wandering in foreign lands. Even the lan- 
guage was changed. The Bureaux d'Esprit, ridi- 
culed by those who were envious or unable to rival 
them, such as the Hotel de Rambouillet, were gone 
forever. Suppers were no longer in fashion, for our 
customs had changed as well as the language. For- 
merly, the ladies, after dinner was over, rose and 
left the table, in order to wash their mouths ; the 
gentlemen went into an ante-chamber for the same 
purpose. Now-a-days, this part of our toilette is per- 
formed at table in many houses, where Frenchmen, 
seated by the side of ladies, wash their hands and 
spit into a bowl. This spectacle would have been 
truly astonishing to their grandfathers and grand- 
mothers." 

As she was seriously in need of money, she 
wrote the " Romance de La Valliere." This story 
was greatly liked. Napoleon, who was inordinately 
fond of novel-reading, read it through without stop- 
ping, and was affected by it even to tears. It went 
through eighteen editions, and brought the age of 
Louis XIV into fashion. Sir James Mcintosh said, 
"It is surely, a most fascinating book," Some 



Madame De Genlis 297 

months after this success, " Madam de Maintenon " 
appeared. Fontanes, in his letter acknowledging 
the receipt of this book, closes by saying: "I doubt, 
even in an age more worthy of you, whether the 
Mesdames de Sevigne and La Fayette would have 
pardoned you for surpassing them. It is true that 
the La Rochefoucaulds, the La Fontaines, and the 
La Bruyeres would have been at your feet, but where 
are they at this day ? " 

Then followed novels and plays thick as the 
leaves of Vallambrosa. The Emperor now requested 
from Madame de Genlis a letter once a fortnight on 
" politics, finance, literature, and morals," as well as 
on any other subjects that might occur to her. He 
allotted to her handsome apartments in the Arsenal, 
and a pension of six thousand francs. After telling 
her readers how highly these letters were valued by 
the first consul, she adds, " It was not my fault if he 
did not become religious." 

The Queen of Naples desired her as governess 
for her family. She did not accept the position, but 
was granted a pension of three thousand francs by 
the Queen, who admired her greatly. In considera- 
tion of this compliment, Madame de Genlis prepared 
a written course of history and literature, as a guide 
for the Queen's children. 

Her drawing-room was crowded every evening 
during the winter of 18 12. Lady Morgan was often 
seen there, fascinating all with her sparkling manner, 
warmth of heart, and good nature — not beautiful, 



298 Madame De Genlis 

but always attractive. Madame Recamier was a con- 
stant visitor. She is usually spoken of as a beautiful 
lay figure, or a soulless coquette, so that it is pleas- 
ant to hear a better opinion from one who knew her 
well, and who was peculiarly quick to notice defects. 
She says : " The more I conversed with her, the 
more talent and interest I found in her conversation. 
Had she not been so handsome and so celebrated for 
her person, she would be ranked amongst the most 
accomplished women of society. The world never 
grants but one species of renown, and only lavishes 
its praise for one darling quality. If Madame 
Recamier had not been so beautiful, every one would 
have praised the accuracy and discrimination of her 
mind ; no one listens zvith more attention (an important 
trait where you wish to charm), for she feels and 
comprehends everything. The delicacy of her sen- 
timents gives an inexpressible charm to that of her 
mind. Her opinions on every subject indirectly 
connected with morals are never calculated before- 
hand, and are extremely accurate. They are the 
free, happy emanations of a pure and feeling heart. 
Notwithstanding all the troubles and misfortunes 
with which her life has been checkered, there is so 
much sweetness in her temper, so much calmness in 
her heart and conscience, that she has preserved 
nearly all the fairness of her complexion, and all the 
charming appearance of her early youth. The round 
of pleasure in which she has lived has rendered her 
completely unable to apply herself to serious occu- 



Madame De Genlis 299 

pations. Disgusted with frivolous amusements of 
every kind, tired of trifling, she now only gives her- 
self up to them through habits of idleness ; but she 
is a proof that it is the most disagreeable situation 
anyone can be placed in who possesses judgment and 
talents. In her most intimate chats she rarely speaks 
of herself, for the interests of her life have never 
been but relative. She has long possessed friends, 
who are deservedly devoted to her, in elevated sta- 
tions, but has never profited herself by her influence 
with them, although always suggesting beneficent 
plans for others. There does not exist a woman who 
has rendered more services than she without cabal 
or intrigue, and there is not one who, after the loss 
of a great fortune, has possessed more dignity under 
reverses." 

The remaining years of this long and busy life 
were spent in publishing a number of volumes — so 
many that it would be fatiguing even to enumerate 
the titles — in entertaining her friends, and in 
attacking the new ideas of the philosophers. At one 
time, in the winter of 1820, she was writing five 
books at the same time. 

It is not strange that she was always looking 
back regretfully to the good old times, when cul- 
tivated women queened it in their salo)is, and politics 
were kept out of general conversation. She says: 

" Our profound thinkers, our great statesmen, are 
continually talking with contempt of the ' frivolity ' 
of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth 



300 Madame De Genlis 

century. It is said again and again that society is 
no longer ' frivolous.' Alas ! it is true, and it is a 
great inisfortune, in my opinion. There is a great 
pleasure in being able to argue well in a serious con- 
versation, or to talk trifles gracefully in a select 
private party ; and the French, in former times, 
seemed to have the exclusive privilege of wielding 
this double power with success. Previous to this 
horrid period, where impiety, licentiousness, and 
pride run mad combined to give birth to all the 
scenes we have witnessed, the frivolity of the French 
was not a national defect. It was, on the contrary, 
the preserver against pedantry, affectation, and a 
thousand ridiculous and dangerous pretensions. It 
was found where it ought to be to form the charm 
of society, in the conversations of men of the world, 
in letters, and the gayest amusements. It excluded 
from our parties a positive and dogmatic spirit, 
metaphysical discussions, politics, and dissertations ; 
and was, in its turn, excluded from important affairs 
and serious works. Men never thought more pro- 
foundly or wrote more elegantly and correctly than 
when society was adorned by the most amiable 
frivolity, which was nothing else but a relaxation of 
mind, and a gaiety full of wit, feeling, and grace. 
Were we to expunge from the letters of Madame de 
Sevigne everything that is frivolous, we should take 
away their principal charm. 

" Such was frivolity amongst us in the times of 



Madame De Genlis 30 1 

old. The following incident will show what modern 
politeness is : 

"Towards the end of June, 1821, I dined with 
thirteen persons, amongst whom were four peers, 
four marshals of France, and three generals ; among 
the peers there were two dukes. Before dinner 
they were in their own way very polite to me, and I 
had no trouble in taking my share of the conversa- 
tion at dinner, for the peers on either side spoke of 
nothing but politics, and addressed their conversa- 
tion to gentlemen at the other end of the table. We 
returned to the drawing-room after dinner, and at 
the moment I was sitting down I saw with surprise 
that all the dukes and peers had escaped from me ; 
each of them took hold of an armchair, dragged it 
after him, approached his neighbor, and thus formed 
a circle in the middle of the room. I was thus 
left quite alone, with a semicircle of backs turned 
towards me. To be sure, I .saw the faces of the 
other half of the party. I thought at first they had 
seated themselves so to play at those little games 
that require such an arrangement, but it was no 
such thing ; it was solely for the purpose of discuss- 
ing the most difficult questions of state policy. 
Everyone became a noisy orator, bawled out his 
opinions, interrupted his neighbor, quarreled and 
talked till he got hoarse ; they must all have been in 
a precious state of perspiration. It was a correct 
picture of the Chamber of Deputies — in fact, it was 
a great deal worse, for there was no president. I 



302 Madame De Genlis 

had a great mind to play the part of one, and to call 
them to order, but I had no bell, and my feeble voice 
could not have been heard. This clamor and con- 
fusion lasted for more than an hour and a half, when 
I left the drawing-room, delighted with having 
received the first lesson of the new customs of 
society, and the new code of French gallantry — of 
that politeness which has rendered us so celebrated 
throughout Europe. I confess that down to this 
moment I had very inadequate notions of all thCvSe 
things. 

" I now met with women who naturally hated all 
kinds of interesting or w4tty conversation, because 
they could take no share in it ; tittle tattle, or 
scandal, formed all their talk ; they had produced a 
coolness among all their husbands' friends by their 
insipidity, their dryness, and their aptness to take 
offense — the ordinary defect of women who want 
talent and education. The most of these persons, 
ridiculously vain, reckoned their reciprocal visits, 
and bid (as it were ) for a courtesy ; they were always 
on the qui vive ! always uneasy with regard to the 
manner in which they were treated, without know- 
ing positively how they ought to be treated ; so that 
they were generally irritating themselves by imag- 
inary failures in politeness and ideal impertinences ! " 

Youth and charm lingered with this inscrutable 
little woman until the very last. At eighty she had 
perfect health, required no glasses — hearing as 
good as at twenty, memory and mental faculties 



Madame De Genlis 303 

unimpaired. The novel which is now most read of 
all her works is " Mademoiselle de Clermont." " Bel- 
isarius " was written simply to outdo Marmontel, who 
had published a book on the same subject. She 
revived in France the " Historical Novel," much in 
the style of Madame Miihlbach. Like Ruskin, who 
has planned more than seventy works which he 
wants to give the world before he leaves it, she 
closes her " Memoirs " with a hint of a dozen more 
books which she hopes to publish. She had many 
chimerical plans, such as the attempt to purify his- 
tory and philosophy by omitting everything irrev- 
erent, skeptical, or untrue ; just as some in our day 
indulge the delusion that the drama would still be 
attractive if raised to the moral standard of the 
church. In short, she embraced the entire Cosmos in 
her schemes of reform, and wondered that all think- 
ers did not turn round and follow meekly in her 
train. In the long sketch of her in the " Universal 
Biography of France," they say : " The world was 
by her divided into two parts — her friends and her 
enemies, or rather, those who admired her and those 
who criticised^ Her " Memoirs" were an apology, a 
compilation, selections from her works, a collection 
of anecdotes — in a word, they are anything but 
memoirs. Call them what you will, they are full of 
interest to this day. 

A more conceited woman never lived, and her 
frankness in quoting her various compliments, poet- 
ical tributes, and constant conquests is weak but 



304 Madame De Genlis 

amusing. She felt herself capable of gracing any 
position, of instructing and guiding any who came 
in her path ; no subject so abstruse or profound that 
she could not master it; no one escaped her criti- 
cism, yet she always spoke of herself as thoroughly 
impartial, never malicious, abused by critics, robbed 
by plagiarists. As the instructor of Louis Philippe 
she deserves great honor. You remember that dur- 
ing his exile he supported himself by teaching, ris- 
ing at half-past four and walking miles to teach the 
higher mathematics in a Swiss college. When a 
civic crown was presented to him for saving a man 
from drowning, he wrote at once to his old teacher : 
" Without you, what should I have been ? " 

Her works were wonderfully popular in their 
day. By the way, it is a curious fact that W. S. Gil- 
bert, author of the irresistible " Bab Ballads," and 
" Pygmalion and Galatea," to say nothing of " Pina- 
fore," borrowed wholesale from Madame de Genlis's 
" Tale of an Old Castle " for his " Palace of Truth," 
which is so much admired. It is little more than a 
paraphrase of her story. 

She had a slight, graceful figure, was ralhev /^efite, 
with curling brown hair and " soft, spiritual eyes." 
But her nose was her pride. Its praise had been sung 
by several of her admirers. In her seventieth year 
she stumbled over a trunk, broke two teeth, scratched 
her face in three places, and broke that beautiful 
nose — that nose so delicate, so perfect in outline. 
Her wailings over this calamity and her rhapsodic 



Madame De Genlis 305 

reminiscence of her nose as it used to be, are serio- 
comic in the extreme. 

Her last days were rather sad ; her means were 
reduced, old friends gone, the glory of her nose 
among the things that were ; yet Mrs. Opie, who 
called upon her in her last year, speaks of her as a 
really pretty and lively little old woman. She was 
found dead December, 1830 — the last morning of 
the year — aged eighty-four. 

Men have reviewed her life and writings with 
great severity. In the " Quarterly " for 1826 we find 
this sentence : " If we may be allowed thus to express 
ourselves, we should say Madame de Genlis has a 
very large portion of a very small mind, and that 
portion is particularly active. Her intellectual arse- 
nal is boundlessly stored with sparrow-shot." In her 
eighty-third year she expressed the opinion that the 
value set upon the opinions of old women is the sur- 
est, if not the only, test of the moral, religious, and 
intellectual state of a country ; and in the " Suppers 
of the Marechale de Luxembourg," gives a picture 
of society under this government ! This, of course, 
made her ridiculous, and reviewers were merciless. 
Yet Miss Kavanaugh says in her sketch : " No woman 
who has written so much, has written so well." St. 
Beuve says of her : " She was above everything an 
author, and would certainly have invented writing, 
if it had not appeared before her time. Her acquire- 
ments made her a living encyclopedia, which prided 
itself on being the rival antagonist of all other ency- 



306 Madame De Genlis 

clopedias. But she was the most gracious and gal- 
lant of pedagogues. Very beautiful, very fascinat- 
ing when she chose, knowing the strength and the 
w^eak points of each one, and knowing how to cast 
her spell of enchantment upon you, she became cold 
and indifferent when you did not respond to her en- 
thusiasm ; of an infinite grace when admired, she 
was hard and severe when one dared to disagree or 
failed to please." 

To judge her impartially she must not be taken 
from the circle where she lived. She wrote for the 
luxurious habitue's of palaces and salons. Let me 
quote a few of her good thoughts : 

" Constant and varied occupation is much more 
powerful than amusements in dispelling sorrow and 
anxiety." 

" There are but two suffrages worthy of desire by 
a feeling and upright heart ; one's own conscience, 
and the voice of friendship." 

" Virtue may be acquired, but goodness is a gift 
of nature." 

" A man declares his love, a woman confesses 
hers." 

" Evil-speaking always spoils the manners of a 
woman." 

"With the exception of the loss by death of those 
we love, almost all our misfortunes and sorrows are 
in part our own fault." 

"Let musical teachers be given to those young 
ladies only who have a musical voice and ear, and a 



Madame De Genlis 307 

feeling for music ; let drawing be taught to those 
only who have a taste for the art, and the number of 
amateurs would be diminished ; and we should no 
longer meet with that crowd of women with trifling 
acquirements and high pretensions, which throws so 
much ennui over the surface of society." 

" Criticism at the present day is nothing but a con- 
tinual system of sneering and ridicule, more or less 
witty and more or less worn out ; such a continual 
shower of irony becomes monotonous." 

" Sleep, which flies from luxury and indolence, is 
the sure reward of real fatigue." 

" Men of letters have an actually existing superi- 
ority over female authors that is perfectly evident 
and indisputable. All the works of women put into 
one scale will not weigh some fine pages of Bossuet 
or Pascal, some scenes of Corneille, Racine, or Mo- 
liere ; but it must not be concluded from this that 
the mental constitution of women is inferior to that 
of men. Genius is composed of all the qualities they 
are admitted to possess, and which they may be en- 
dowed with in the highest degree — fancy, sensibil- 
ity, and elevation of soul. The want of study and 
education having at all times kept women apart from 
the career of literature, they have shown their great- 
ness of soul, not by describing historical facts in their 
writings, or by bringing forth ingenious fictions of 
fancy ; but by real actions they have done better 
than describe, and have often by their conduct fur- 
nished the models of sublime heroism. No woman 



308 Madame De Genlis 

in her writing has described the lofty soul of Corne- 
lia ; what matters it, since Cornelia is not an imag- 
inary being ? " 

French women of that early period, always excep- 
ting Madame de Sevigne, seem to be either fanatics 
or flirts. We fear our eccentric friend is no excep- 
tion ; yet it is difficult to read her own story and not 
believe in her innocence. Madame always ended 
with amoral. In imitation, we regret that her char- 
acter and talents were ruined by excessive vanity. 
This fault led her into a dangerous position, and 
kept her there ; it shadowed every virtue, every ac- 
complishment, and makes us not unwilling to say 
good-bye to Countess de Genlis, Jack-of-all-trades, 
Paragon of Perfection, " Gouverneur du RoiT 



ARE WOMEN WITTY? 



ANTITHESES IN CRITICISM. 

"Women have more wit than humor." — Oliver Wendell 
Holmes. 

"Women have more humor than wit." — John Boyle O'Reilly. 

"Women are not witty, I am sorry." — John Boyle O'Reilly. 

" Humor is the rarest of quahties in women." — Richard Gratit 
White. 

It is best not to indulge in too positive state- 
ments when wishing to convince. So I ask the 
question, " Are women witty ? " hoping that my 
readers will give a hearty verdict in the affirmative. 
Even this gentle interrogative has roused many a 
sneering reply, much adverse criticism, and one 
superior cynic inquires with a patronizing air if 
Miss Sanborn has never heard of Hood and Hook, 
Curran, Sheridan, etc., and what we women have to 
compare with their brilliancy, as if a modest plea for 
a recognition of woman's wit and humor argued 
ignorance of those immortals or any desire to belittle 
their fame. 

From time immemorial, men have declared with 
owl-like solemnity and about as much wisdom, that 
women have no sense of humor, no capacity for wit, 
no woman's name in any collection of humorous 



310 Are Women Witty? 

poetry, epigrams, or repartees, until the last two 
years. In Mason's " Masterpieces of Humor" lately 
published by Putnam, women are represented for 
the first time. And special tributes are now given 
occasionally, as in a recent eclectic Sarah Orne 
Jewett is said to "possess genuine humor, the 
humor of Lamb and of Hood ; the humor which is 
likely to bring a tear to the eye as well as a smile to 
the lips." 

I wish to own that Pope recognized the quality 
in woman and acknowledged it several times, as : 

" Her tongue bewitched as oddly as her eyes, 
Less wit than mimic, more a wit than wise ' " 

But search magazines from the earliest to the 
latest. You find at regular intervals heavy articles 
on wit and humor, with hackneyed definitions of 
these undefinable and elusive qualities, illustrations 
oft quoted, but no woman's name. And more than 
half of the wit of the past consists of hits at women, 
and satire on their faults and foibles. 

" Why," says Stinson Jarvis, or Jarvis Stinson, 
in an open letter to the Century, " Why, in literature 
are there no female humorists?" 

Why, in the name of common sense and common 
perception, does he fail to see that both humorous 
and witty women abound in America ? 

He answers his own question. " Is it not because 
our sister has been so far compelled by nature to 
make idols and because she is too much in earnest 
over her devotion to lapse into what would seem to 



Are Women Witty? 31I 

be frivolity ? If, in spite of all her effort, some 
other power throws her idols down, or, if they throw 
themselves down, she' may become bitter or sad or 
savage or religious, but never humorous ! " 

I will give a few words written to me last week 
from an editor of one of the most important New 
York dailies to show the general impression of cul- 
tivated men : 

" I used to think that there were no humorists of 
the female sex, but one day in Puck, Madeline 
Bridges, in the course of a colloquy between desert 
nomads, made one of them ask the other to ' come 
in out of the simoon,' as we in American slang ask 
people ' to come in out of the wet.' Whereupon I 
concluded that a sense of humor did exist in the 
feminine mind." How absurdly ignorant, conceited, 
and patronizing. 

John Kendrick Bangs in a recent lecture indulges 
in the old slur about woman's utter lack of wit. 

You naturally remember him as the author of 
"The Idiot Club!" 

But women are waking up to reciprocal courte- 
sies, and enjoy satirizing some of the many assail- 
able characteristics of men as : 

Geo. Eliot. — " I'm not denyin' the women are 
foolish ; God Almighty made 'em to match the 
men." 

Mrs. Phelps Ward. — " As a rule, a man can't cul- 
tivate his mustache and his talents impartially." 

Mrs. Phelps Ward. — " No men are so fussy about 



312 Are Women Witty? 

what they eat as those who think their brains the 
biggest part of them." 

Rose Terry Cooke. — " Marryin' a man ain't like 
settin' alongside' of him nights and hearin' him talk 
pretty ; that's the fust prayer. There's lots an' lots 
o' meetin' after that ! " 

A lady once told me she could always know 
when she had taken too much wine at dinner — her 
husband's jokes began to seem funny ! 

From Ouida. — " A man is never so honest as when 
he speaks well of himself." 

Lucretia Mott's humorous comment when she 
entered a room where her husband and his brother 
Richard were sitting, both of them remarkable for 
their taciturnity and reticence : " I thought you 
must both be here — it was so still ! " 

A wealthy parvenu lately gave the church which 
he attends two tablets of stone, with the Ten Com- 
mandments engraved upon them ; whereupon a 
witty lady member of the church remarked that his 
reason for giving away the Commandments was that 
he couldn't keep them. 

Recall the usual themes for a man's jokes, in print 
or in the home. 

The poor mother-in-law ! Is she to be forever 
traduced and roared over in barroom, theater, the 
club, and at stag dinners ? From the time of Adam, 
who is supposed to have congratulated himself that 
he had none, that feeble joke has been tottering 
down the ages. Entire plays are based on it, and 



Are Women Witty? 313 

cultivated audiences crowd our best theaters to see a 
popular company, skilled in interpreting Shakes- 
peare, rushing wildly round the stage, several stars 
in assumed hysterics or convulsions ; while the 
mother-in-law, an unreasonable tyrant and virago, 
chases long-suffering sons-in-law around the room, 
striking them over the head with an umbrella, or 
slapping their faces like a modern fish-wife. This 
is uproariously applauded, and the morning papers 
report " A Brilliant Hit." '' Instantaneous Success." 
" Peals of Laughter." The earliest attempts at 
dramatic representation were not more exaggerated 
and absurd. In fact, the scolding of Noah's wife in 
the Chester Miracle Play is more truly humorous. 

As this much abused and vilified woman too 
often supports the son-in-law, or acts as nurse, cook, 
and general servant with willing affection and devo- 
tion for his entire family, this seems more cruel than 
comical. A man seldom gives this relative any 
credit for humor. Let us honor the one who ac- 
knowledged the wit of his mother-in-law ! He says : 
" A few weeks after my son had swallowed a penny, 
she wrote to inquire, ' Has Ernest got over his 
financial difficulties yet ? ' " 

How tired we are of the mouldy jokes on the 
new bonnet, seal-skin sack, mortality caused by 
young wife's attempts at cooking, shoes several 
sizes too small, sleeves or hats as many sizes too 
large, the big feet of Chicago girls, the gum-chew- 



314 Are Women Witty? 

ing at Vassar, and the frigid bean-devourer of Bos- 
ton, also the mythical ice-cream fiend. 

Prohibit vulgarity, profanity, flings at our sex, 
and the loudly vaunted wit of the past shrinks sur- 
prisingly. 

With men the most irresistible humor often lies 
on the dangerous border-line between humor and 
vulgarity, while the humor of cultivated women, 
delicate and subtle, effervescent and evanescent, is 
more difficult to catch and preserve, like the sea- 
weed in Emerson's " Each and All." 

One eminent authority allows that there have 
been two really witty women in England : Lady 
Montagu and Catherine Fanshawe. We all know 
the former as letter-writer, converser, beauty, phil- 
anthropist, gossip, traveler, and wit, and perhaps all 
will recall the same sarcastic sentence : " There is 
but one reason I am glad I am a woman : I shall 
never have to marry one." 

Miss Fanshawe was not only witty, but was 
known as an artist, a poet, and a thoroughly delight- 
ful woman. " Never running the risk of giving a 
moment's pain to anyone," a difficult attainment for 
ordinary mortals ; still more so for a wit. Too 
many acting on the principle, " If you cannot speak 
evil " of a person — do not speak of him ! 

The enigma on the letter H ascribed to Byron 
and printed in various editions of his poems, w^as 
written by this versatile woman. She composed 
capital charades in verse, a fashionable pastime then. 



Are Women Witty? 315 

When the Regents' Park was first laid out she 
parodied the two well-known lines from Pope's 
" Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady : " 

" Here shall the spring its earliest sweets bestow, 
Here the first roses of the year shall blow." 

in this fashion, only altering one word in first 
line, one letter in second : 

" Here shall the spring its earliest coughs bestow, 
Here the first noses of the year shall blow." 

English women do not equal the French as wits, 
but we can instance Lady Blessington, Jane Austen, 
Fanny Burney, Jane Taylor, Hannah More, Mary 
Ferrier, Mary Rus.sell Mitford, Mrs. Carlyle, 
Madame Mohl, Lady iVshburton, Mrs. Grote, 
George Eliot, and many more. 

We even have a veritable witticism from the 
Queen. Hearing of the grace and agility of a pretty 
Scotch lassie who had danced a sword dance most 
cleverly for some of her officers she commanded the 
same diversion for herself and was equally enter- 
tained. At the close of the brilliant performance 
the girl advanced and courtesied profoundly, 
" What can I do for you ? " asked her majesty. 

"Give me the head of Gladstone," said the mod- 
ern Herodias. 

" I would gladly do that, my dear, but he lost it 
some years since." 

Princess Maud of Wales, like her father, the 
Prince of Wales, dearly loves a joke, and is inclined 



316 Are Women Witty? 

to be witty and facetious at all times. Some of the 
best current puns in London are attributed to the 
Princess Maud, just as fugitive jokes are yet credited 
to Abraham Lincoln. 

Miss Havergal, who is known by her noble life 
work and volumes of devotional verses, was not 
devoid of genuine humor. When reading her 
interesting memoirs I copied a rhyme about Bores, 
which will appeal to all. 

" People of every age and class, 
Under review appeared to pass, 
Specimens, too, in greatest variety, 
Of every sort of bores in society. 
Boorish bores and bores polite, 
People who stay too late at night. 
People who make long morning calls, 
People who think of nothing but balls, 
People who never a move will make, 
People who never a hint will take. 
Strong-minded bores and weak-minded, too, 
Masculine, feminine, not a few, 
People who borrow books to lose, 
People who will not wipe their shoes, 
People who keep your mind on the rack. 
Lest some pussy escape from the sack, 
Over-stupid and over-clever. 
People who seem to talk forever, 
People who mutter and people who drawl, 
People who will not talk at all. 
Old pianos that rattle and jingle. 
Or Broadwood Grands that make your ears tingle, 
With polka and waltzes four hours a day, 
All barrel organs whatever they play. 



Are Women Witty? 317 

All German bands that won't play in tune, 
People who practice too late or too soon, 
Contraltos that groan and sopranos that squall, 
Bassos that bellow and tenors that bawl." 

And so on. The list is too long to quote entire, 
for bores, like the poor, we always have with us ! 

By the way, Eliza Leslie said : " Avoid giving 
invitations to bores. They will come without." 

Lady Blessington may not have been pre-emi- 
nently witty, but said some good things as, " When 
the Sun shines on you, you see your friends. It re- 
quires sunshine to be seen by them to advantage." 
" Friends are the thermometers by which we may 
judge the temperature of our own fortunes." Her 
biographer speaks of her sallies of wit in her early 
happy days. Unlike Mad. de Stael, from whose tor- 
rent-like monologue men fled as for their lives, she 
seldom engrossed the conversation ; never dogma- 
tised or played the learned lady. Brilliant thoughts 
were thrown off by her with the utmost ease. One 
boil mot followed another without pause or effort, and 
best of all, while her wit and humor were producing 
their desired effect, she would take care, by an apt 
word or gesture to draw out the persons who were 
best fitted to thrive in society, giving a chance to 
all — a give-and-take mode of interchange, sure to 
make a woman popular and essential for the would- 
be leader of a salon. 

Louis Napoleon, after his election to the presi- 
dency of the French republic, did not invite Lady 



318 Are Women Witty? 

Blessington to the Tuileries, although he had often 
been entertained by her in London. Meeting her 
one day, he inquired if she expected to remain long 
in Paris. To which her cool reply was : " And you ? " 

Of a very awkward man coming into the room, 
Mrs. Montague once whispered to Sir William Pepys : 
" There is a man who would give one of his hands to 
know what to do with the other." 

She wrote many sparkling poems or verses for 
the showy, superficial annals then so popular. 

After spraining her ankle severely and made pain- 
fully lame, Miss Cobbe says : "I went to drive in 
Regrent's Park, and came rather late into the draw- 
ing room full of company, supported by what my 
maid called my best crutches. The servant did not 
know me and announced ' Miss Cobble.' I cor- 
rected her loudly enough for the guests to hear in 
that moment of pause : " No ! Miss Hobble.' " 

Lord Houghton's sister was often annoyed at her 
brother's indiscriminate hospitalit3\ " Do you re- 
member, my dear," he asked her at dinner one day, 
*' whether that famous scoundrel X. was hanged or 
acquitted ? " '• He must have been hanged, or you 
would have had him to dinner long ago," replied the 
lady. 

Mrs. Asquith has a ready wit and nimble tongue, 
and fears no one. She was the life of the celebrated 
yachting party given at Copenhagen, when Mr. 
Gladstone met the Czar. Upon her return to Lon- 
don, she convulsed society with her word pictures of 



Are Women Witty? 3 19 

Mr. Gladstone who wanted to talk all the time, and 
Lord Tennyson who thought no entertainment so 
delightful as reading his own poetry, the two holding 
forth to rival, but constantly decreasing, companies 
at opposite ends of the ship. 

Among French women, the only difficulty is to 
select from a host. Think of Madame du Deffaud, 
blind, old, bitter, but admired. Helvetius was 
blamed in her presence for having made selfishness 
the supreme motive of human action. " Bah ! " said 
she, " he has only revealed every one's secret." 

When someone complained that Voltaire " had 
not much invention," she exclaimed, " What more 
can you ask? He has invented history." 

Madame de Stael's reply to the diplomat, who, 
sitting between herself and Madame Recamier, said : 
"Here I am between wit and beauty." "Yes, and 
without possessing either." 

Madame de Sevigne writes : " One loves so much 
to talk of one's self that one never tires of a tete-a-tete 
with a lover for years. That is the reason for con- 
fession. It is for the pleasure of talking of one's self, 
even though speaking evil." The phrase " After us 
the deluge," has been given to Madame de Pompa- 
dour. ]\Iarie Antoinette's milliner ought to be re- 
membered for her epigram — " Nothing is new that 
has not been forgotten." Sophie Arnould, a fasci- 
nating French actress, about 1744, was noted for her 
wit, so much so that Arsene Houssaye has preserved 
her i?on uiots in a volume called Arnoiildiana, which 



320 Are Women Witty? 

will compare with anything of its kind in the French 
language. For a dozen years prior to the Revolu- 
tion, Sophie Arnould was a queen of society, as well 
as art, and in her elegant salon she held a brilliant 
court, where distinguished men were proud to pay 
homage to her beauty and genius. 

Benjamin Franklin said he nowhere found such 
pleasure and such wit as with her. Poets sang her 
praises, artists were eager for her portrait. " What 
are you thinking of ? " she said to Bernard in one of 
his abstracted moods, " I was talking to myself," he 
replied. " Be careful," she said, " you gossip with a 
flatterer." 

To a physician whom she met with a gun : " Ah, 
Doctor, you are afraid of your professional resources 
failing ? " 

A beautiful but brainless woman complained of 
the persistency of her lovers : " You have only to 
open your mouth and speak, to get rid of their im- 
portunities." Being told that a Capuchin monk had 
been devoured by rats, she exclaimed with an ex- 
pressive shrug : " Poor beasts ! their hunger must 
have been something terrible ! " 

I come with pride and delight to the witty women 
of our own country, beginning at Boston, with Helen 
Bell, Rufus Choate's brilliant daughter, who made 
that remark quoted without credit by Emerson, " To 
a woman, the consciousness of being well dressed 
gave a sense of tranquility which religion failed to 
bestow." 



Are Women Witty? 321 

Julia Ward Howe is undeniably witty. Her con- 
currence with a dilapidated bachelor, who retained 
little but his conceit, was excellent. He said : " It is 
time now for me to settle down as a married man, 
but I want so much ; I want youth, health, wealth, of 
course; beauty, grace — " "Yes," she interrupted 
sympathetically, " You poor man, 3^ou do want them 
all." 

Of a conceited young man airing his disbelief at 
length in a magazine article, she said: " Charles evi- 
dently thinks he has invented Atheism." After 
dining with a certain family noted for their chilling 
manners and lofty exclusiveness, she hurried to the 
house of a jolly friend, and seating herself before the 
glowing fire, sought to regain a natural warmth, ex- 
plaining, " I have spent three hours with the Mer de 
Glace, the Tete Noir, and the Yung Frau, and am 
nearly frozen." 

Pathos and humor as twins are exemplified by 
her tearful horror over the panorama of Gettysburg, 
and then urged by Mrs. Livermore to dine with her, 
saying : " O no ! my dear, its quarter past two, and 
Mr. Howe will be wild if he does not get — not his 
burg — but get his dinner." 

Think of many other witty Boston women : Lu- 
cretia Hale with her inimitable Peterkin Family, her 
sister Susan with her flashing repartee and genuine 
epigrams, Mrs. Phelps Ward, Sarah Orne Jewett, 
Abby Morton Diaz, Mrs. Maria Porter. 

It was Mrs. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who said 



322 Are Women Witty? 

that the Cunard steamer Oregon committed suicide to 
avoid being put on that company's Boston line. 

Miss Hale recently sent me some economic aphor- 
isms to keep my spirits up : " One swallow does not 
make a summer, neither does one scholar pay the 
dressmaker's bill." " There are no birds in last 
year's nest, but last winter's bonnet may bear another 
flower." 

Charlotte Fiske Bates, formerly of Cambridge, 
excels in epigrams, quatrains, and short humorous 
poems. 

There is much genuine humor among the women 
journalists of Boston, although they make no pre- 
tensions to wit, and do not seem to know how truly 
they possess it. "Do you live on the Back Bay?" 
said a lady the other day to Miss Jenkins, so well 
known by her " Chatterer " column in the Herald 
and whose home is on a narrow little street up town. 
" Rather, the small of the Back Bay," she answered 
instantly. Marion Howard Brazier spoke in one of 
her letters of a woman who had been married for 
fifty-six years and had never missed lighting the 
kitchen fire, and added thoughtfully : " Her husband 
must be the most extraordinary fire-escape on record." 

While on a visit in Quebec, our driver said he 
carried a Boston woman and party up into the citadel 
court, and there pointed out the small brass cannon, 
saying : " This we captured from you at Bunker 
Hill." She quickly replied, " Ah, well, never mind, 
we have the hill." 



Are Women Witty? 323 

A very " fresh " young- man lately made the ac- 
quaintance of a young lady from Boston, to whom he 
proceeded to pour out a long story of some adventure 
in which he had played the hero. His listener was 
much surprised. " Did you really do that ? " she 
asked. " I done it," answered the proud young man, 
and he began forthwith upon another long narrative, 
more startling even than the first. The Boston 
woman again expressed her polite surprise. " Yes," 
said the fellow, with an inflation of the chest, " that's 
what I done," A third story followed, with another 
" I done it," and then the Boston girl remarked : " Do 
you know, you remind me so strongly of Banquo's 
ghost ? " " You mean the ghost in Shakespeare's 
play?" "Yes." "And why?" "Why, don't you 
remember that Macbeth said to him, ' Thou canst 
not say I did it ? ' " The young man could not imag- 
ine why everybody laughed. 

Reading this lecture in towns near Boston, I 
asked for instances of humor among their women, 
and secured several. A minister's wife disliked liv- 
ing in one of these suburban places, giving- as her 
reason that it had the qukt of the grave without its 
peace. Another woman said : " If I am ever tried for 
my life, I do hope I can have a jury of my own fam- 
ily, for they would never agree." And a young girl 
hunting in vain for the box of hard boiled eggs pro- 
vided for a picnic, and harder yet, failing to find 
them, exclaimed : " Those eggs must have been mis- 
laid." 



324 Are Women Witty ? 

The first wife of Mr. Higginson was a noted wit. 
Many of her sayings are preserved in his novels. 
In New York we count the witty women by tens : 
Mary Mapes Dodge, Mrs. Runkle, Mrs. Botta, Mrs. 
Alice Wellington Rollins, Mrs. Lizzie Champney, 
Mrs. Terhune (Marion Harland), Mary D. Brine, 
Josephine Pollard, Mrs. E. T. Corbett, Mrs. Victor, 
Mary Kyle Dallas, and Kate Douglass Wiggins 
Riggs, who will count two-score at least. In Brook- 
lyn, Caroline B. LeRow, Frances Lee Pratt, Ella 
Kirk, and a dozen more. I would like to illustrate 
by extracts from their work. Marietta Holley be- 
longfs to New York state. Her Samantha Allen and 
Betsey Bobbet convulsed the continent. She is con- 
stantly solicited for humorous articles and more 
funny books, until she is well-nigh killed. Men, I 
mean publishers, find that women's wit puts much 
money in their pockets. As they rattle the gold and 
caressingly count the bills from twentieth editions, 
do they still think of women as sad, crushed, senti- 
mental, hero-adoring geese, w^ho can't see the humor- 
ous side ? Octave Thanet is most decidedly humor- 
ous. Phoebe Gary has been called " the wittiest 
woman in America." She parodied Whittier's exqui- 
site Maud MuUer. I recall four pithy lines : 



"We're apt to fuss and fret 
About the one we didn't get ; 
But we needn't make such an awful fuss 
If the one we didn't want didn't get us.' 



Are Women Witty? 325 

Barnum ^sked her one evening what was her 
favorite brand of champagne ? " We drink Heidseik, 
but we keep Mumy Another day he reported the 
marriage of his skeleton man and the fat woman. 
She said instantly, " I suppose they loved through 
thick and thin." 

Fanny Fern must not be forgotten, nor Aunt 
Fanny Barrows, nor jMargaret Undergrift. The 
Misses Wilder of Brooklyn had a great reputation 
for ready wit. Once, when the Misses Wilder, 
both being at that time not yet engaged, proposed 
to have a screen to separate their parlors, a young 
gentleman was asked to suggest a motto to em- 
broider on the screen. He replied : " For many 
have called but few have chosen." Miss Maud 
Wilder retorted on the instant : " No, we will put 
on, for your special benefit, ' Be not faithless but be 
leaving.' " I will give two verses from Maud, now 
Mrs. Goodwin : 

Carved in the old Cathedral 

Where the wise men service said, 

Just over the old oak pulpit, 

Is a monkey, scratching his head. 

But to-day, in our high church pulpits, 
The case is reversed ; instead, 

'Tis the monkey reads the service, 
And the wise man scratches his head. 

The driver for Mrs. Kemble and her coaching 
parties at Lenox said : " If I could have bottled up 
the sparkle, the wit and humor evolved in those ex- 



326 Are Women Witty? 

cursions, I could have made a book to be read by 
everybody, but it would be too difficult now to repro- 
duce it. If you have read Miss Sedgwick and heard 
]\Irs. Kemble and Miss Cushman, you can possibly 
imagine what must have been its character. Miss C. 
said, I could drive the slowest and get there the 
quickest of any man she ever knew." 

It was Fanny Kemble who spoke of some one as 
" single as a stray glove." jMrs. Child, describing 
adornments of a room, speaks of a vase of flowers 
done in water colors, looking sickly and straggling 
about as if they were only neighbors-in-law ; and 
Ophelia with a quantity of " carrotty " hair which is 
thrown over three or four rheumatic trees, and one 
foot ankle-deep in water, as if she were going to see 
which she liked best, hanging or drowning. 

Rose Terry Cooke possessed both wit and humor, 
and they shone in her sketches of New England 
characters, and in her daily conversation. I remem- 
ber she spoke to me of some one as a " decayed 
gentlewoman," but quickly added, " not offensively 
so." 

In Washington think of Gail Hamilton, Kate 
Field, Julia Schayer, and Grace Greenwood. Grace 
Greenwood makes capital puns, and has said a thou- 
sand witty things, as when she said of a genuine 
type of the old New England Yankee, " He looks 
as if the Lord had made him and then pinched him." 

Some lady was describing an unfortunate man 
who had tumbled awkwardly about in getting into 



Are Women Witty ? 327 

an omnibus, grabbing at ladies' knees for support, as 
" a perfect savage." " Of the Pawnee tribe, doubt- 
less," said Grace. She used to be a chronic punster, 
and is one of the best raconteurs in America. She, 
doubtless, inherited her wit from her mother. She 
says, that on coming into the breakfast room on a 
winter's morning, she saw her mother in a shawl of 
brilliant hue, and cried out, " See the scarlet woman ! " 
Her mother rose and with a mocking bow responded, 
" Yes, and the mother of abominations." This re- 
minds me of Talmage's youngest daughter who was 
fond of evening gaieties and often slept late in con- 
sequence. Coming down about nine o'clock, she met 
her parent's stern gaze, and received the depressing 
greeting : " Good morning, daughter of sin." " Morn- 
ing, Father," was her response. 

In Philadelphia, Miss Louise Stockton displays a 
quaint humor almost equal to her brother Frank. 

In Chicago I consider Mrs. Clinton Locke and 
Sarah Hackett Stevens among their wittiest women. 
Mrs. Locke is the wife of the popular rector. To 
count them all would be impossible. 

The Rev. Clericus has been waiting half an hour 
to speak to his wife, who is having a call from Mrs. 
Longwind. Hearing the front door close he sup- 
poses the visitor is gone. 

The Rev. Clericus (calling from his study) : 
"Well, is that old bore gone at last? " 

Mrs. Clericus (from the drawing-room, where Mrs. 
Longwind still sits) : " Oh, yes, dear, she went an 



328 Are Women Witty? 

hour ago ; but our dear Mrs. Longwind is here — I 
know you will want to come in and see her." 

Nor can we visit every city, town, village, and 
hamlet, to add examples that plentifully exist ; we 
must classify. 

How do men dispose of such humorous literature 
as that given to us by Catharine Sedgwick, Eliza 
Leslie, Caroline M. Kirkland, Mrs. Whitney, Mrs. 
Stowe, Rose Terry Cooke, Mrs. Whicher of Widow 
Bedott papers, Mrs. Ellen H. Rollins in " New Eng- 
land By-gones," Mrs. Walker who originated that 
saying: " The total depravity of inanimate things," 
Mrs. McDonell, "Sherwood Bonner," whose skit in 
the Chestnut Street Radical Club of Boston will 
carry her name on for generations, Mary Wilkins, 
etc., etc., unless men only read their own wit and 
admire their own brilliancy. Junius Henry Brown 
thinks that man cannot change his long-held esti- 
mate of woman's mental calibre from which, as he 
made it up, he carefully eliminated all sense of the 
ludicrous. It is a wise man who writes, " Don't 
you know that men hate to meet women in the 
arena for any sort of contest but one — that of licarts ? " 

In these progressive days when women are tak- 
ing high rank in every profession and every busi- 
ness, when young girls are winning prizes for math- 
ematics, oratory, essays, in fair competition with 
young men, when middle-aged women are managing 
yachts and riding bicycles, and the muscles of our 
college girls are being hardened by boating, golf, 



Are Women Witty? 329 

and tennis, it is simply absurd to cling to this moss- 
back fallacy of the past. Such critics remind me of 
a mole which, blind and living under ground, only 
comes out of his hole to nibble with sharp teeth at 
something growing above him. 

The professional wit carefully reserves his good 
things for pay, in print, or for after-dinner display, 
but half the women of my acquaintance are saying 
and writing good things all the time, without the 
least effort or self-consciousness. At every age, from 
ninety to nine, I find an abundant fund of illustra- 
tion ; and even younger. Think of dear old Mrs. 
Wade, eighty-six years of age, more lively than 
many a maiden in her teens, fond of games, excelling 
in fancy work, admired by all. When a lonely old 
fellow actually proposed to her a few years ago, she 
relegated him to the position of a brother, and when 
he would not be sent away, and begged her to make 
the subject a matter of prayer, she said quickly, with 
a quizzical smile, " No, I'm not going to bother the 
Lord with questions I can answer myself." And 
she said she'd concluded to wade through the rest of 
her life. 

Old ladies often continue to see the humorous 
side. One such old dame, living in New Hampshire, 
and nearing her centennial, was bidding farewell to 
her oldest son, who had come on from the far west 
to see her. " Kiss me again, mother," he said. " I 
may not have another." And she inquired, " Why, 
James, don't you feel as well as usual ? " 



330 Are Women Witty? 

Another venerable woman, who could not remem- 
ber some story she desired to quote, said : " Why, 
sometimes I seem to know nothing." It was during- 
that period in politics when a certain party were 
known by that name, and her son said : " You'll have 
to join the Know-Nothings." " Well, I won't have 
to go far," she retorted, looking keenly at him. 

At a large party given in honor of her arriving at 
her ninetieth birthday, she was heard to say : " I 
seem to be one among ten thousand, even if I am not 
altogether lovely." 

" The woman clergyman is often witty, as is Anna 
Shaw." Once, when answering the question-box, at 
a meeting, the question was asked, " Who is respon- 
sible for the liquor business ? " She answered tersely, 
" Men. Of course they have votes and the business 
can be voted up or down, according to the will of the 
voters." A minister in the audience said, " Sister 
Shaw, don't you think that is rather hard on the 
men ? Don't you think the devil has something to 
do with the liquor traffic ? " She looked thoughtful 
a moment, and then lookiftg at the brother, said, 
" Well, yes, if the brother is willing to accept the 
company, men and the devil." A friend says: 

Since I wrote you last I have recalled a sharp 
repartee made, in my hearing, by a little girl only 
five years of age. She was a member of the family 
that occupied part of the house in which I lived while 
studying at Andover. She was teased a good 
deal by a brother a little older than herself, on 



Are Women Witty? 331 

account of the color of her hair, which was an unmis- 
takable red. The brother mentioned had a capillary 
covering of an indescribable hue, probably of the 
shade which the old lady defined as " half-way be- 
tween a dander-grey russet and a fire-stone drab." 
He had ruthlessly tormented his little sister one 
day, when she suddenly turned on him and exclaimed, 
with flashing eyes : " Well, I can tell you one thing, 
Fred, I know what color my hair is, and that is more 
than you can say ! " 

If the merit of a retort can be gauged by its suc- 
cess, this one ought to rank high, for it put an end 
to the persecution. 

Susan B. Anthony represents the elderly spinster, 
witty to the last, as quick now as when, thirty years 
ago, Horace Greeley said to her : " The ballot and 
the bullet go together. You women say you want to 
vote. And you're ready to fight, too ? " 

" Yes, Mr. Greeley, we are ready to fight — at the 
point of the goose quill — the way you always have ! " 

The wit of young girls is apt to take the form of 
repartee, and to be highly spiced with pepper-sauce, 
as, at a church wedding, when an impecunious 
groom said impressively : " With all my worldly 
goods I thee endow," his cousin in the front pew 
whispered : " There goes his valise y 

A young English attache of the legation in 
Washington remarked to an American belle some 
years ago : "I am weally sorry to see that the 
Bering Sea affair is not likely to be amicably ad- 



332 Are Women Witty? 

justed, for, of course, with our superior navy, we 
could just wipe you off the face of the earth." She 
replied with one word — " Again ? " 

Is not that as true wit, in condensed form, as the 
remark of Talleyrand, and a cruel one it was to the 
wretched sufferer on his deathbed, who said, " Oh, I 
suffer the torments of hell!" '■'■ De'ja ? '' (already?) 
asked the diplomat. 

It was the younger daughter of Judge Chase, 
who, on passing General McClellan, who was leaning 
gracefully over the back of a chair at a reception : 
" Ah, General, behind your entrenchments, as 
usual." 

Another girl, who had spent a winter in Wash- 
ington society, with no end of admirers and atten- 
tion, went for the summer to a seaside resort, where 
the flattering devotion continued. 

Among the train was an addle-pated dude, who 
said to her one evening, in a patronizing way, 
in the intervals between his cane-suckings, " Weally, 
Miss Scott, you must have an awfully nice time, 
don't you know — so much attention. Why, some- 
times I truly fear it will turn your head." " Indeed, 
Mr. Softy, I have more fear for my stomach." 

Fashionable Doctor : "My dear young lady, you 
are drinking unfiltered water, which swarms with 
animal organisms. You should have it boiled ; that 
will kill them." 

His Patient : " Well, doctor, I think I'd sooner be 
an aquarium than a cemetery." 



Are Women Witty ? 333 

A well known society woman of the West end, 
unfamiliar with the niceties of the English language, 
spoke at one of those delightful teas which char- 
acterize this delightful season of the year, of a 
spinal staircase of great beauty which had been con- 
structed in the house of a neighbor. There was a 
bright girl near by who heard this architectural — 
or anatomical — reference. She said, aside, and it 
was very mean of her to whisper : 

" Perhaps the lady refers to her neighbor's back 
stairs." 

It was at a state ball. The Englishman and the 
American girl were talking over some of those 
present, when the Englishman said : " That is Lord 

B who has just passed you. Have you met 

him? " 

" Yes," was the answer. " and I thought he was 
extremely dull." 

" You surprise me," said he, " he is one of the 
most brilliant lights of our service." 

" Really ? " she replied. " Then it is my turn to 
be surprised. His light flickered so when he talked 
with me that I set him down as one of your tallow 
diplomats." 

And surely our married belles are not slow at 
retort. 

At a supper party in London the other night the 
conversation turned on "talking shop." Someone 
declared that an actor or musician was never happy 
unless allowed to talk shop by the hour, and then it 



334 Are Women Witty? 

was pointed out that doctors and barristers were 
"just as bad." A witty lady present laughingly 
added: "Yes, philosophers talk Schopenhauer, ladies 
shopping, tipplers ' Schoppen,' musicians Chopin, 
and actors shop." 

Mrs. Lincoln's remark, as the vivacious Miss 
Todd, to her lank, gawky admirer, is worth quoting : 
Young Abe said, " Miss Todd, I want to dance 
with you the worst way." And she added, " ]ie 
surely did.'' 

Mrs. Fred Grant is a witty woman, as is proved 
by her remark to Frederick Douglass, who regretted 
being dragged into a political excitement as a nom- 
inee : " You'll have to figure as the dark horse, Mr. 
Douglass." 

Mrs. George Pendleton replied appropriately to 
one of our English critics who complained: "You 
have no antiquities ; no curiosities in your country ! " 
"Antiquities will come in time, and as for our curi- 
osities, we import them." 

And that suggests the response of Miss Patterson, 
who married a Bonaparte, and was asked at a dinner 
in England why the Americans had such bad man- 
ners. She said she supposed it was because of 
their direct English descent without any infusion 
from the A borigiiics ! 

It was a Washington woman who said : " Sumner 
should never have married. His self-love was so 
intense as to make it almost bigamy." 

Rudyard Kipling's mother is described as the 



Are Women Witty? 335 

wittiest woman in Northern India. She said of an 
extremely erudite but garrulous official, that he 
ought never to be allowed to talk, but should be 
consulted when required as a cyclopaedia of inform- 
ation. 

Married women do not lag behind when attacked. 
Rev. Dr. Trask of anti-tobacco fame said ,to his 
petite wife soon after their marriage : " I confess I 
am disappointed in your height." " No more than I 
am in your depth," she retorted. 

Of wit in dramatic form let me say that Gilbert 
borrowed his " Palace of Truth " almost bodily from 
" The Tale of an Old Castle," by Madame de Genlis, 
and that those inimitable farces, "The Belles of the 
Kitchen " and " Fun in a Fog " were written by an 
Englishman especially for the Yokes family. 

In our own country, Mrs. Monatt's " Fashion," a 
comedy in five acts, was played most successfully 
and for a long " run " at Wallack's in New York and 
in Philadelphia, and Mr. French, the publisher of 
plays, tells me it has been acted all over the Union, 
and has everywhere been a great favorite. 

Mrs. Yerplanck's " Sealed Instructions " also met 
with marked approval. 

Miss Merington's plays written for Sothern are 
complained of by the masculine critics as being " too 
witty"! bristling with epigrams and over-radiant 
with brilliant repartee. 

Lovers of mirth are now enjoying in New York 
Miss Martha jMorton's comedy, " His Wife's Father," 



336 Are Women Witty? 

and Crane is complimented for the quality of Jiis 
humor. Neil Burgess burlesques Widow Bedott, 
and is regarded as its author. The younger 
McCarthy does give to Madame Rejane genuine 
wit in her art. Miss Kate Vannah and Miss Bartlett 
are now collaborating a comedietta. 

Women's wit never fails, even in the street cars : 

Polite gentleman, rising, " Take my seat, 
Madame." 

" Never mind, thank you, I get out here, too I " 

Severe conductor, " Miss, this is the smoker's 
seat." 

Young lady, " Must I smoke if I sit here ? " 

" You can't keep a good man down," said the 
proverb-loving boarder. 

" Not," said the typewriter boarder, " not unless 
he has a seat in the car. Then you can't get him 
up." 

The concise description of a ladies' lunch as 
" Giggle, gabble, gobble," was from a New York 
leader in society. It has been widely ascribed to 
Dr. Holmes, who assured me in an autograph letter 
that it did not belong to him. 

Fully half the humorous poetry in our current 
magazines is from women. I know several who 
earn their pin-money sending their own off-hand 
jokes and those of their less enterprising sisters to 
comic papers for good pay. 

In Dean Ramsay's " Reminiscences of Scottish 
Humor" he quotes Jimmy Fraser, an idiot, who 



Are Women Witty? 337 

said the cleverest thing of them all. I would gladly 
include a witty idiot girl in my collection, but can- 
not find an idiot ^zW/ 

Off-hand letters scribbled on shipboard fairly 
scintillate. Here is one bit from a very seasick 
girl: 

" Life is intolerable and the whole world a huge 
mass of food. And alas for the busy, restless mind. 
I actually wished I had lost mine before starting, for 
the one thing you can retain is ideas. ' Ten minutes 
for refreshments,' ' hot fried oysters,' ' boiled eggs,' 
hotel gongs, etc., chase through my brain like mad. 
Still laboring under the delusion of ' must eat ' I 
take a cracker, one small, dry, hard, Boston cracker. 
Heller's tricks pale beside this one of mine, for I 
instantly threw up several dozen. I try a little 
brandy, but 'tis quickly converted into a ' brandy- 
sling.' " 

Books of travel from the pens of women, are 
they deficient in humorous incident. and vivid sense 
of fun ? 

Some man regards the absence of a funny column 
in a girl's paper as proof of no humor. It seems to 
me evidence of wit and sense — anything less humor- 
ous than those efforts I know not of. 

After a careful consideration of masculine wit as 
shown to-day in the weakly efforts of professional 
humorists, the pathetic senilities of Punch, the 
tedious specimens of after-dinner fireworks, when 
nothing will go off, being damped by dullness and 



338 Are Women Witty ? 

reiteration, the confessed inability of our noted 
story-tellers to invent or smuggle a new and really 
laughter-provoking anecdote, I deem it unwise to 
wish to live up to, or rather down to, this somnolent 
and twilight interregnum of masculine wit. 

And in time this absurd, unmeaning fallacy will 
disappear, and the wit and humor of women will be 
generously and universally acknowledged. 

If it is a " very serious thing to be a funny man," 
it is even more dangerous to be a witty woman. 
For remember : 

'■ Tho' you're bright and tho' you're pretty, 
They'll not loz>e you if you're witty ! " 



